JFK Assassination Figure. A pathologist, he is remembered as the prosector at the controversial autopsy of President Kennedy. Raised in Philadelphia, he attended St. Joseph's Prep School, St. Joseph's University, and Villanova University prior to joining the V-12 program during World War II and earning his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College. Dr. Humes entered onto active duty in the Navy, trained in pathology, and after a succession of assignments was Chief of Laboratory Services at Bethesda Naval Hospital on November 22, 1963. When the decision was made to bring JFK's body to Bethesda for autopsy he was, as the senior pathologist, tasked with performing the autopsy with the assistance of his associate Dr. J. Thornton Boswell and of Dr. Pierre Finck from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). Beginning at about 8 or 9 PM on the evening of Friday November 22nd, Dr. Humes performed the autopsy procedure with Dr. Boswell drawing the pictures and taking most of the notes and Dr. Finck kibitzing. He wrote up his report stating that the President died of two gunshots fired from above, behind, and to the right on Saturday night into Sunday morning and delivered it to Presidential physician George Burkley at the White House on Sunday evening. He gave testimony to the 1964 Warren Commission, remained at Bethesda until his 1967 retirement, served as Chairman of the Pathology department at Detroit's St. John Hospital as well as a professor at Wayne State University, later accepted a professorship at the University of Florida Health Center in Jacksonville, lived out his days in northern Florida, and died of lung cancer. From the moment he submitted his autopsy findings unto the day of his death and beyond, Jim Humes has been a lightening rod for virtually every conspiracy theorist on Earth, various individuals accusing him of lying in response to pressure, of incompetence, of using veiled and ambiguous terminology in an attempt to tell the world that not everything was as it seemed, or even of having been 'in on it'. Sometime during the procedure, Dr. Humes stated that there was evidence of "surgery to the top of the head", his words documented by FBI agents Siebert and O'Neill but never explained. (No such 'surgery' was done in Dallas). Further, sometime either late Friday night or early Saturday morning, he placed a call to Parkland surgeon Mac Perry to inquire as to why a tracheotomy was performed; as any physician would obviously know the indications for a trach, the apparent implied question was thus "why did you do it on a man with non-survivable injuries?". As a side issue, the conversation with Dr. Perry provided Dr. Humes' first knowledge that there had been a bullet hole in the front of the neck. Perhaps the most highly discussed part of his involvement in the case came after he revealed that on Sunday morning he burned the original autopsy notes in the fireplace of his home, having first copied them. While he stated that the papers were soaked with JFK's blood and he did not want them to become an object of ghoulish curiosity as is the chair in which Lincoln was sitting when he was shot (as a teenager, Dr. Humes was a tour guide at Greenfield Village, a museum in Michigan where the chair is displayed, with many visitors wanting to know whether the stains on the headrest are blood), his explanation failed to satisfy the critics who openly questioned just how many autopsy reports there were and what changes were made over the weekend. Also, many wondered if he gave anything else to Dr. Burkley along with the report, specifically the brain, which has never been accounted for. In December of 1963 he publically stated that he had been "forbidden to talk", routine procedure in any sensitive military situation, but still more fodder for the critics. Dr. Humes testified before the Warren Commission in 1964 and before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late 1970s, in each case sticking to his original story but stating things in such a way that differing interpretations were possible, for example "It is impossible for the bullet to have entered other than from behind, or to have exited from other than from behind". Thus his testimony was seized upon by a small group of critics who believe that the President was shot from the Grassy Knoll and that at some point between leaving the Parkland ER and arriving at the Bethesda morgue his body was surgically altered to make it appear that the shots came from the School Book Depository. These individuals cast the doctor as neither fool nor villain but as a man who was lied to and, as an experienced pathologist, recognized the fact but, surrounded by his superiors and subject to outside coercion, could do nothing about the fact, and thus used coded language in an attempt to express his concerns. For his part, Dr. Humes was highly respected in his profession, consented to numerous interviews over the years, never waivered from his original stated conclusions, said that anybody who wanted the truth could "find it in the Warren Commission Report", and never denied the note burning nor changed his given reasons for it. When the movie "JFK" was released in 1991, he said that it "made him sick to his stomach", though his only specific criticism was that actor Chris Robinson who played him was too old for the part of the 39 year old man he was in 1963. Today, Dr. Humes brush with history remains as problematic as ever, the differing wound descriptions given by the Dallas and Bethesda doctors have never been reconciled (interestingly, Dr. Burkley, the only physician to observe the injuries in both settings, was never called upon for testimony), and the question of "Who killed Kennedy?" is still contentious.