Doctor discusses JFK conspiracy

JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, by Charles A. Crenshaw, M.D., with Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw, Signet, 205 pages, $4.99.

For years, there has been speculation about what occurred on Nov. 22, 1963, in Trauma Room 1 of Dallas’ Parkland Hospital.

Assassination buffs have compared conflicting autopsy photographs and written evidence, but not until now has an eyewitness come forth with a firsthand account.

Dr. Charles Crenshaw was a young third-year resident surgeon at Parkland when news of the shooting reached the teaching hospital. As part of a team of crack surgeons and nurses, whose work was watched by nervous, gun-toting Secret Service agents, Crenshaw knew from the beginning that their efforts were futile. The cavernous head wound, Crenshaw said, reached from the right temple to the back hairline near the neck, and was immediately fatal. Still, the team worked furiously to save their president, who had only a hint of a pulse and heartbeat. They never dreamt that in two days some of them also would labor just as furiously to save the ebbing life of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Even then, Crenshaw, said, he studied Kennedy’s head wound, never wanting to forget the gruesome history forged that day. And even then he had no doubt, based on treating thousands of gunshot victims, that John Kennedy was shot from the front.

Although an avid reader of JFK assassination books and articles, Crenshaw only recently reviewed the autopsy photos taken at Bethesda Naval Hospital. They clearly show a bullet hole in the back of the nearly intact head, with the wound in the right-front temple. The small tracheotomy incision made at Parkland from what Crenshaw says was a bullet entry wound, apparently was altered to a gaping 3-inch gash, giving the appearance of an exit wound. Finally, Crenshaw reports that in Dallas he helped place Kennedy in a sheet and into an expensive casket for transfer back to Washington. Bethesda doctors claimed JFK arrived in a gray body bag and a cheap steel coffin.

During the years after the assassination, Crenshaw and other doctors maintained their silence, in part out of fear for their lives, but mostly to protect their young careers. “Conspiracy of Silence” is a quick read, and is meshed with accounts of the shootings written by JFK assassination expert J. Gary Shaw. Although much of the information has been reported before, it remains fascinating to read it from an eyewitness. For readers with the stomach for them, the book includes copies of the conflicting Parkland-Bethesda photos.

Crenshaw is a bitter man, and his anger is reflected in his pages. More than once, he blames the Secret Service for Kennedy’s death, and at the end, he suggests that Lyndon Johnson — who allegedly telephoned Crenshaw to order a deathbed confession from Oswald while the alleged assassin was still on the operating table — was involved in both the plot to kill the president and the conspiracy to cover it up. The final words of the book speak of Crenshaw’s rage at those who have withheld the truth from the public: “At best, they may be considered cowards … at worst, co-conspirators or accessories after the fact.”

After nearly 30 years, “Conspiracy of Silence” marks the end of Crenshaw’s tenure as a charter member of this infamous club.

John Ripley is a reporter on the NEWS Government and Politics Desk.