Dr. Paul K. Maurer is a New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Assassination, a best-selling author, and a board certified member of the American Board of Neurosurgery. He is one of the country s leading experts on gunshot wounds, and like many Americans, still is studying and looking at the horrific and brutal assassination of my good friend, Charlie Kirk.
00:00:14.980Paul Maurer is a graduate of the University of Rochester.
00:00:18.540He got his medical degree at the University of Rochester.
00:00:22.280He did his neurosurgeon residency at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
00:00:27.840He was an attending neurosurgeon for the United States Army at the San Francisco, California Letterman Medical Center.
00:00:37.420He was an attending neurosurgeon at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 1988 to 1992.
00:00:43.720The chief of neurosurgery at the 86th Evacuation Hospital during the Saudi, in the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia.
00:00:52.680He's also assistant professor of neurology at the University of Rochester from 1992 to 1998, professor of neurology at the University of Rochester from 1998 to the present time.
00:01:03.880He's also the attending neurosurgeon at the UHS Medical Wilson Medical Center and has been a board certified member of the American Board of Neurosurgery since 1988.
00:01:15.900I go through all of those academic and military credentials to say that he is one of the countries, if not the country's leading expert on gunshot wounds.
00:01:26.460And he, like many, many Americans, still is studying and looking at the horrific and brutal political assassination of my good friend, Charlie Kirk.
00:01:39.000Dr. Maurer, welcome back into the Stone Zone.
00:01:59.940Both of them serious questions about the ballistics and the circumstances surrounding those shootings.
00:02:07.600In the case of JFK, the government conducted investigation by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who took an entire seven days to declare that there was a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, a disgruntled communist who fired three shots, hitting John F.
00:02:29.980Kennedy from the Kennedy from the rear, nothing else to see here, handing it off to the Warring Commission.
00:02:35.500Actually, it was 50 years yesterday, essentially asking them and getting them to rubber stamp that conclusion.
00:02:44.840We now know, of course, that that's not true due to a number of studies, but also a stunning new documentary on Paramount, what the Parkland doctors saw, had a number of the attending physicians say that they saw in JFK wounds consistent with his being shot from the front and the back.
00:03:07.420And the doctors at Parkland also noted a massive grapefruit size blowout wound in the back of JFK's head, which would indicate that he'd been shot from the front.
00:03:19.740They also noted that the wound in his throat, where a tracheotomy had been later performed, was most likely an entry wound rather than, as the Warring Commission tries to tell us, an exit wound.
00:03:33.100So if we, by the FBI's assessment so far, that Charlie Kirk was shot from the front with a 30-06 charge, should there not have been an exit wound and a blood splatter in such a wound?
00:03:53.160We, I like to try to take all these surgical dilemmas, trauma dilemmas, bullet wounds and everything else.
00:04:00.320You know, as I mentioned, you know, balls are balls, strikes are strikes.
00:04:03.660And so I try to call them as they are and assess them as scientifically as I can based on, you know, over almost over 14,000 brain and spinal cord operations.
00:04:13.620It's been through a lot of blood over the years.
00:04:16.320So let's, if it's okay with you, I would start it right with what we have to deal with, recognizing, you know, we don't have all the cards on the table, which is always the problem.
00:04:28.440Because voids of knowledge will always be filled with speculation, which frankly is imposed upon us, not to sound too harsh on that statement.
00:04:38.840But when you have a void, people will fill the void.
00:04:41.880So from a standpoint of terminal ballistics, which, as you mentioned, I lecture a lot about to military and law enforcement, literally all over the world, in which I don't know the word expert applies, but certainly I spend a lot of time dealing with that, as well as my surgical experience.
00:04:59.600There are some very interesting aspects of this case.
00:05:03.600And so to walk through them, just a moment, it's very important as I waded through over these last two weeks or whatever it is now, of speculation, some of which is very sound, some of which would strike me as maybe, in my opinion, a little less sound.
00:05:24.700If there's four camera angles to visualize this, and obviously our video data is our best, it's the best data we have at this point, recognizing as effective as it is in high quality, some of the shots are, it still leaves some room.
00:05:39.920But first, let's start with the very first couple frames of that.
00:05:44.640And I walked through this frame by frame by frame as much as possible multiple times.
00:05:50.940And as he has the microphone in his hand, he answers that final question, leans back, and you hear the snap, the signature of, it's almost certainly a rifle sound.
00:06:02.320You always have to be careful about saying that, but it's certainly an unsuppressed, non-silenced weapon, because it's a different sound characteristic.
00:06:09.740It sounds like a rifle crack of an unsuppressed weapon.
00:06:14.720And almost immediately, now I would keep in mind, and this is going to be important when we walk through the neck wound for the ballistics, we're just going to walk through this neck wound a bit at a time.
00:06:24.840And the round that I practice most with for precision rifle closes 700 yards in 1.03 seconds.
00:06:34.760So the sound from the snap of that rifle to impact is a distance of, variably reported, between 146 and 200 yards.
00:06:43.000Now, yes, we can't assume that's where he was shot from.
00:06:47.280So I'm not saying, that's not etched in stone.
00:06:49.780I'm just saying, the theory right now, he was shot from a slightly upper depth down angle, from a decline angle, maybe 15, 20 degrees or so, someplace 200 or less.
00:07:03.480That bullet's going to close that distance in a fraction of a second.
00:07:08.400The fact that it's potentially a 30-06, again, we don't want, because if we're really going to do an analysis of this in a clean fashion, we can't even etch that in stone.
00:07:17.800But let's, for the sake of discussion, say it was a Mauser Model 98, somewhat shortened barrel, apparently, maybe 20, 22 inches or so from what they're divulging so far.
00:07:27.640Bolt-action weapon with a scope, of course.
00:07:30.680That's, you know, that's a doable shot, as I think most people agree.
00:07:34.600It's, you know, you couldn't just pick that up having no experience, but some moderated experience, that's a doable shot.
00:07:40.520I would start by saying, because I lecture so much to the military and to law enforcement people, I've spent a lot of time over the last two weeks, me calling people, them calling me.
00:07:50.560The first thing I'd say is, I'm sure, obviously, you know better than anybody, he wasn't aiming for his carotid artery in the neck.
00:07:57.160That was either a head shot that went low or a chest shot that went high.
00:08:00.740I have never heard in training or ever that anyone aimed for the neck.
00:08:08.980I'm just saying that, you know, that was either a low head shot or a high chest shot.
00:08:13.340But it ended up in about the worst place you could possibly get hit in your neck.
00:08:18.560You see him lean back after he brings the mic away from his comment.
00:08:23.340And you hear the signature of the rifle sound.
00:08:25.640You see an immediate little splash of blood, maybe centimeter and a half, two centimeters maximum, less than an inch.
00:08:33.120You see a little absolutely circular splash of blood followed.
00:08:38.300Now, I haven't seen anybody mention this, which is interesting to me.
00:08:41.480But if you go back and look at the video frame by frame, the most common video, pretty macabre, I agree, but the one mostly from in front, you see something very interesting, which has not been mentioned by anybody that I've seen.
00:08:54.420Walking through what happens when a bullet hits you, and this is essential to analyzing exit, entry, should it have left his neck, should it have stayed in his neck?
00:09:06.900When you get hit with a bullet, so you pull that trigger on the .30-06, that bullet impacts the front of the neck in what's called the sternocleidomastoid, not trying to confuse anybody with a lot of words.
00:09:19.000It's the muscle that runs down the front of your neck.
00:09:21.960When you look in the mirror, you'll see a muscle that goes from the top of your breastbone and heads behind the ear.
00:09:28.380That's the sternocleidomastoid muscle.
00:09:30.920We spend a lot of time there in neurosurgery because when we fix broken necks or we fuse your neck, we literally make an incision exactly where he got shot.
00:09:40.580And you put your finger in after you dissect the platysma muscle, and in five minutes, your finger's on the front of the spine, which is in the center of your neck.