Two doctors who treated the dying President Kennedy doubt the story of a physician who says in a book that goes on sale Friday that Kennedy was shot from the front.
Dr. Kenneth E. Salyer, who said he worked with Dr. Charles Crenshaw in the emergency room where Kennedy was treated Nov. 22, 1963, suggested Thursday the frenzied emergency room was not the place to make a sound conclusion about the wounds.Salyer declined to criticize Crenshaw for his assertion about Kennedy's wound, but said: "Anybody can make an observation and make a statement about it, and some people have a little more expertise than others . . . He is trained as a general surgeon."
Crenshaw's "JFK: Conspiracy of Silence" goes on sale Friday and publicists have arranged news and talk show appearances to promote it.
Crenshaw has been unavailable to discuss his opinions, but in a transcript of an interview with ABC's "20-20," to be aired Friday, he said he looked at Kennedy's wounds before "we placed him in the coffin."
"I wanted to know and remember this for the rest of my life," he said. "And the rest of my life I will always know that he was shot from the front."
The Warren Commission, appointed by President Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Kennedy was shot from behind by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. However, many various alternative conspiracy theories have been suggested over the years.
Several of the theories claim Kennedy was shot from the front by a gunman standing on a grassy knoll in front of the motorcade.
Crenshaw did not testify before the Warren Commission, but was mentioned by several witnesses.
Crenshaw told "20-20" he did not go to the commission because: "If I had gone against all the other people and created this bomb, I'd have been a pariah of our medical community. I could have lost my job."
Crenshaw, 59, is the semiretired head of surgery at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. At the time of Kennedy's assassination, he was a third-year resident at Parkland Hospital.
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Stone urges probe of RFK's death
`JFK" director Oliver Stone is among a group urging a grand jury to examine the Los Angeles police investigation of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination.
"We are not charging any grand interlocking conspiracy," said Paul Schrade, a former aide to the senator. Schrade was wounded during the June 5, 1968, shooting in the Ambassador Hotel.
Sirhan Sirhan is serving a life sentence for the killing. Both the LAPD and a special investigator hired by the Los Angeles County supervisors concluded he was the lone gunman.
Schrade said group members pored over more than 50,000 pages of files and found evidence of police misconduct, including threats against witnesses and destroyed evidence.
Police Chief Daryl F. Gates declined to comment, saying, "This has been looked at a number of times before and it hasn't resulted in anything different."
Spurred by Stone's hit movie, Congress resolved last week to open secret files on the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the senator's brother.
"JFK," which won two Oscars this week, theorizes that a government conspiracy led to the president's murder.