(5 of 17)
Dr. Carrico inserted a tube in the throat wound, connecting it to a Bennett machine, which stimulates respiration. Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, the chief doctor, decided that a more radical procedure was necessary; he performed a tracheotomy, making an incision that cut away the wound in the front of the throat. Meanwhile, two doctors infused blood and fluids into the President's right leg and left arm. Dr. Carrico gave him hydrocortisone. Two others inserted chest tubes to drain off blood and air from the chest cavity.
But nothing could revive the nerves, muscles or heart. At about 1 o'clock, Father Oscar L. Huber administered the last rites, and Dr. William Kemp Clark pronounced the President dead.
The Evidence Against Oswald
The Warren Commission's evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald is over whelming beyond reasonable or even rational doubt.
Oswald's Nov. 22 presence in the Texas School Book Depository Building, both before and until shortly after the assassination, is absolutely authenticated. Moreover, an eyewitness placed Oswald near the killer's sixth-floor store room lair a scant 3 minutes before the fatal shots were fired. In that store room, the Commission says, Oswald's palmprint was found on a carton that had been moved to make a nest for the assassin as he peered out the window.
The Rifle. Within minutes after the assassination, cops found hidden in the storeroom a cheap, Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-mm. (about .26-cal.) rifle, serial number C2766. The FBI learned that the same rifle, already mounted with a Japanese-made, four-power telescopic sight, had been mailed in March 1963 from a Chicago firm to "A. Hidell, P.O. Box 2915" in Dallas. Handwriting experts told the Commission that the coupon ordering the weapon, the signature on a money order to pay for it and the address on the envelope all were written by Oswald's hand. Oswald's wallet contained fake identification cards for "Alek James Hidell"; one such card carried Oswald's own photograph.
No identifiable fingerprints were found on the rifle after the assassination. According to the Commission, this was partly because the wooden stock was too rough to hold them. But the police did discover a palmprint from Oswald on a section of the barrel attached to the stock. Said the Commission: "Oswald's palmprint on the underside of the barrel demonstrates that he handled the rifle when it was disassembled." A tuft of cotton fibers — blue, grey-black and orange-yellow — was found clinging to the rifle butt. Under microscopic examination, the fibers matched those in a shirt that Oswald had worn the day of the assassination.
Oswald's wife Marina identified the weapon in testimony to the Commission as the "fateful rifle of Lee Oswald." In May 1963, she said, she had often seen Oswald holding the rifle while lounging on their screened porch, peering through the cross hairs in the telescopic sight, constantly practicing the use of the bolt mechanism.
Marina took a backyard photo in the spring of 1963 that showed her husband arrogantly posing with his rifle and a holstered pistol. In its investigation, the Warren Commission had the FBI