Excerpt From The Men Who Killed Kennedy
Original US version as aired on A&E network
Paul Groody:
Three weeks after I buried Lee Harvey Oswald, the Secret Service came to me and they said, "Paul, did you see any scars such as the scars on his wrists where he was supposed to have tried to commit suicide in Russia"? And I said, of course, I wasn't looking for the likes of this and really in my own mind did not feel as though I remembered much about this-didn't remember seeing any marks of that kind. And the Secret Service agent told me at that time, "Well Paul, we just don't know who we have out there in that grave".
Bill Curtis:
That mystery did not end with Oswald's burial. Lingering doubts about the identity of the person buried at Rose Hill Cemetery at Fort Worth prompted Oswald's widow Marina to have his body exhumed in 1981.
Paul Groody:
Being of Russian background and not truly trusting the American, she often wondered if his body was really there, so when it came the opportunity to possibly bring his body to the surface, she was most interested to know-is his body really there? Had somebody taken his body from the grave after the burial had been made? Well, that was her motive partly. And then too, I think, she was interested to make sure that this was really Lee Harvey Oswald that was still there in that grave.
At the time of the '63 burial time, I put Lee Harvey Oswald in a steel reinforced concrete vault. That vault was hermetically sealed. The vault is guaranteed not to break, crack, or go to pieces-it's heavy concrete with steel in it with an asphalt lining. And when I opened the grave in '81 and found that that vault had been broken and the bottom of the vault was the part that was broken-the top was still intact-I noticed at that time that the casket had been disturbed-I questioned in my own mind what had been going on. When I opened that casket the first time, I sent my wife Virginia to Marina to tell her, "yes, there is a body in that grave" because that was her concern. And then we did go to Baylor-there was an examination by a medical person who was this forensic pathologist. And she determined that yes, these were the teeth of Lee Harvey Oswald but it took two years for her to make that determination before the report was actually done.
Linda Norton:
The findings of the team are as follows:
We independently and as a team have concluded beyond any doubt, and I mean beyond any doubt, that the individual buried under the name of Lee Harvey Oswald in Rose Hill Cemetery is in fact Lee Harvey Oswald. At this point in time, we hope this puts the matter to rest without any further speculation being raised as to the identity of the individual at Rose Hill.
Bill Curtis:
Oswald's Marine dental record was used to confirm the identity of the exhumed body. But once again, the official version does not tell the whole story. Paul Groody, an experienced mortician, made one vital observation that confounds their findings. he speaks about it here for the first time.
Paul Groody:
Of course, I was the one that had to handle the body in the morgue at Baylor. And as we removed the body from the casket, or at least worked with the body, I could recognize that this clothing was the clothing that I had put on that body. And yet when I saw the head of this body and it was removed from the casket and removed from the body in order that they might x-ray it and take pictures, I could see that there was no autopsy on that head.
When an autopsy is done and the skull is cut in order to remove the cap in order to remove the brain, there is a distinctive line of where all the fissures and all of the skull has been parted. Now, it's going to cause a bit of a mark no matter what you try and do-it's going to show. And knowing that I handled the body originally and there was an autopsy on that head and now to see that there was no autopsy on the head made it, in my mind, pretty clear that something had transpired that had caused this.
I feel as though someone had gone to the cemetery...off hours, had taken the head of really of Lee Harvey Oswald that now was dead-how he got that way I don't know but at least it was the head-and had brought the vault to the surface as best they could being a heavy item as it is-a tripod lifting that body lifting the body and the vault out of the grave. In the process the bottom of the vault fell breaking the vault causing the casket to deteriorate to a degree. Then of course, removed the head of the one that was there that had been autopsied and put this head in it's place so that we would find the teeth of Lee Harvey Oswald-that's my theory-this is what I think happened. Whoever caused that is the same faction that caused the assassination in the first place. In my mind, a cover-up had taken place.