JFK Case NOT Closed Chapter Previews
Chapter 14
How Two Medical Illustrators Were Duped into Falsifying Autopsy Photos in Support of a ‘Lone’ Assassin!
Harold Rydberg and Ida Dox are not well known names associated with the JFK assassination, but both professional medical illustrators were highly instrumental in shaping public perception about the wounds President Kennedy sustained on November 22, 1963.
To spare the Kennedy family and the American public the anguish of seeing the actual autopsy photographs, the Warren Commission wisely toned down the graphic nature of the images by tasking naval corpsman Harold Rydberg to provide medical illustrations that would eliminate the gruesome aspect of the photos while accurately depicting the entry and exit wound locations on JFK.
Fifteen years later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) did the same, hiring medical illustrator Ida Dox to provide tasteful schematic drawings of the wounds on Kennedy’s body.
With the actual autopsy x-rays and photographs under lock and key in the National Archives, the illustrations by the two medical artists are what the general public came to know about the non-fatal wounds on JFK as well as the wounds to the head that killed him.
Remarkably, neither illustrator based their drawings on the actual photos taken at autopsy. Instead, the wounds they depict in their illustrations came from verbal descriptions provided by a doctor, in Rydberg’s instance four months after the assassination.
The result is two sets of schematic drawings that don’t even match each other in locating the wounds on Kennedy. Even worse, medical experts who have been allowed to view the autopsy images in the Archives report that neither set of diagrams accurately show the bullet entry wounds on the body!
Keep in mind that the Rydberg and Dox illustrations were the primary source of messaging by the government committees in claiming that all the shots came from Lee Oswald’s rifle positioned above and behind the limousine.
For the rest of his life, Rydberg, who was never allowed to see the original photos despite several requests, denounced the accuracy of his own drawings which he felt mislead the American people about an important historical event.
Ida Dox went stealth after the HSCA was released and has declined to comment on her drawings.
A new official investigation needs to reconcile the differences between the actual photos and the schematic representations to help answer the vital question of whether there was one or more gunmen in Dealey Plaza.
