A Simple Act of Murder
November 22, 1963
By Mark Fuhrman

Morrow. 232 pp. $25.95

Reviewed by Thomas Lipscomb

H. L. Mencken cautioned that "for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong," but that doesn't keep detective turned talented criminal investigative writer Mark Fuhrman from seeing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as "a simple act of murder." Sometimes, fortunately, in seeking that "simple solution," some real progress is made in defining how to go about finding any solution. Mark Fuhrman's book is well worth reading for its clarity and single-mindedness in taking on the challenge of a much-muddled subject. It is also the most useful brief summary to date of how the investigations into the assassination have proceeded, officially and unofficially, from 1963 to the present.

Mark Fuhrman spent his professional life in the Los Angeles Police Department, and shared the conclusion of many of his colleagues that there had to be a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. Despite that, he set himself the task of solving the case in "an effort to clear away some of the fog... so that we can see it for what it is -- a simple act of murder." He certainly succeeded in creating a brisk read for armchair investigators.

Fuhrman correctly notes that most of the vast material commenting on the assassination is peripheral to the evidence and begins at the wrong end of the investigation by trying to decide on a suspect first, and then cutting the evidence to fit. Fuhrman reviews the evidence first. And his understanding of it provides both the highlights and the failures of his book as he proves to be not above cutting some of the evidence himself.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is Fuhrman's masterly analysis of Arlen Specter's much-debated "magic bullet" theory. Specter, as assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, came up with an ingenious theory as to how one bullet caused extensive wounds to President Kennedy, then to Texas Gov. John Connally, and then conveniently rolled out -- to be found, almost pristine, on Connally's stretcher at Dallas ' Parkland Hospital. The theory was so improbable that three members of the commission objected to it. One , Georgia Sen. Richard Russell, refused to sign the report unless his dissent was published with it. It has since been the inspiration for dozens of conspiracy theorists, who jump to wildly differing conclusions.

According to Fuhrman, Specter's difficulty was that the commission had concluded that the first of the three bullets Oswald fired had missed. That meant the second bullet had to do double damage since the commission had also decided that the third bullet was the head shot that hit only Kennedy.

Fuhrman's solution is simpler and obvious. According to the commission, three shots were fired; the range of all three shots was between 50 and 100 yards, the rifle had a four-power telescopic sight, and the target was moving at less than 8 m.p.h. It was almost impossible to miss with any shot. Why wasn't it more likely that the first shot hadn't missed, but had indeed hit Kennedy in the upper back and that the second shot had hit Connally (hence, the bullet found on his stretcher)? Fuhrman's theory makes a lot more sense.

There is only one problem. No one has yet succeeded, under similar conditions, in making those three shots with a comparable bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano in the 5.6 seconds allotted by the Zapruder film timing, much less reload, aim, and fire another shot in the 1.8 seconds Fuhrman allots between the first shot striking Kennedy and the shot striking Connally. Fuhrman and Specter both have a problem.

The "magic bullet" theory actually originated with a naval officer nominally in charge of what is generally agreed was the badly botched autopsy conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital with 28 people crammed into the room and the Kennedy family outside determining what would and would not be allowed. The officer was Cmdr. James J. Humes.

The Kennedy autopsy was Humes' very first forensic autopsy and he was as full of opinions as he was an amateur in forensic autopsy. Fuhrman concludes that Specter should have known better than to buy into Humes' theory, once he took the consistent -- and directly conflicting -- testimony of Connally and his wife. But the commission was under tremendous pressure from Lyndon B. Johnson's White House to get its report out before the 1964 election, and it was certainly easier to wind it up by August listening to Humes as if he actually knew what he was talking about.

Unfortunately, despite calling the Humes autopsy "botched" himself, Fuhrman goes along with its conclusions, ignoring forensic autopsy expert Cyril Wecht, radiologist David Mantik, and others who have offered important reconsiderations of the autopsy X-rays and photographic evidence -- all of it indicating that the autopsy was part of a government smoke screen concealing just how the shots had hit Kennedy. Fuhrman seems more inclined, like Gerald Posner of Case Closed, to find a better basis for the Warren Report than to consider new evidence. Available now, for example, are photographs collected from the more than 30 photographers present in Dealey Plaza that day. Some of these appear to challenge the Zapruder film, which the commission put forward as the most important evidence.

A Simple Act of Murder is not entirely satisfying, but it is hard to believe any solution ever will be, especially when one reads a recent statement by Gary Cornwell, who served as deputy chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations that investigated the Kennedy assassination in the late 1970s. Looking back after all the years he spent on the case with chief counsel Robert Blakey, Cornwell concluded that "the honest truth is that we will probably never 'solve' the case. The case should have been solved in 1963 and 1964, and because the government decided not to look for the real answers when it had the chance, the opportunity was probably lost forever."

This article first appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.