Word: casket
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...J.F.K. Casket...
David Lifton's "two-casket" argument makes mention that Kennedy's bronze Dallas casket was damaged, perhaps in a hastily executed body-switching scenario at Bethesda Naval Hospital. However, according to William Manchester's book The Death of a President, this casket was damaged in Dallas as a result of its improper removal from the hearse that transported it to Air Force One. This event was witnessed by several of Kennedy's closest aides...
...honor guard members finally found the ambulance at the rear loading platform. The bronze casket was back in the vehicle and they helped carry this casket into an anteroom outside the morgue. On this second entrance into the hospital, says Lifton, Kennedy's body was back in the casket. Lifton found several witnesses, including Hospital Corpsman James Metzler, who saw the casket opened in the autopsy room at this time -and now the corpse was wrapped in a sheet, just as it had left Dallas...
...Lifton has this triple entry of caskets (once by the gray casket and twice by the bronze) well documented, he admits to puzzlement at how the body got out of the morgue after its first entry, to rejoin the bronze coffin in which it had left Dallas. The report by the two FBI agents, which was never seen by the Warren Commission staff but had been sent directly to the National Archives, gave Lifton one clue. At one point, they wrote, "all personnel with the exception of medical officers needed in the taking of photographs and X rays were requested...
Lifton has no hard evidence to support this method of reuniting body and bronze coffin. But O'Connor did tell him that there was talk at the hospital afterward of a casket being rushed through the halls. Also several witnesses reported that the bronze coffin appeared damaged, including a broken handle, when it was carried into the morgue by the honor guard...