00:00Okay we are going to move to Dr. Curtis while you guys work through the mic issue but Mr. Bolden
00:04please be assured we will be coming back to you so we'll just pass. We will be coming back though.
00:10Dr. Curtis if you can. Thank you. My story begins when I
00:17left my office to go to get something to eat before I did surgery and to do that I had to go
00:24by the emergency room and when I went by the emergency room a policeman came out of the door
00:29into the emergency room grabbed my shoulder he said are you a doctor?
00:36Can everybody hear? Yes sorry Dr. Curtis uh Mr. Bolden we can hear you now your your microphone's
00:41working but Dr. Curtis is doing their opening statement so if you could just pause real quick
00:46and then put yourself on mute. Thank you. Dr. Curtis please continue. All right so uh the policeman
00:53asked me if I was a doctor and I said yes and he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the
01:00emergency room and took me to the trauma room and uh when I looked in the trauma room there was three
01:06people in the room one was the president and he was laying on the gurney and an extremist and the other
01:14was Dr. Carrico James Carrico and one nurse and the reason Dr. Carrico was on his own is because the uh
01:25Governor Conley was brought in before him and he was uh very seriously ill and the staff all the staff
01:34in the emergency room went to help him and then Dr. Carrico was left to take care of the president by
01:40himself. So I walked in and he had just placed a endotracheal tube and uh then I walked up and held
01:49the tube so he could connect the bird machine to it. The bird machine is an intermittent positive
01:55pressure uh respiratory help and it works by filling the lungs and and then letting the air come back out
02:03and the way it works is that the uh the inspiration continues to uh certain pressure and then the
02:12expiration continues to another low pressure and therefore uh that that space is the uh the the
02:22breathing normally that's about 10 or 15 minutes uh 10 or 15 times during a minute and but in this case
02:31it was it was going about 100 to 125 conversions in a minute so it was rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat and
02:46and I'd never I knew the machine Dr. Carrico knew the machine we used it a lot and uh so the question was
02:55is is is the machine not working or is there two blocked or one and he had placed the tube in and
03:02uh if you place it in a tracheal tube you place it between the cords and then you know you're in the
03:08trachea and you've got an airway but in this case apparently we didn't have an airway and finally uh it was
03:16a question but is that the machine or is it what is it and so finally it got to a point where I said Jimmy
03:22what do you want to do and he had already made a decision he said tracheostomy we need to do a
03:27trach so if there was going to be a trach well I knew the shirt would be in the way so I moved around
03:36to take the shirt off and the nurses the way ahead of me with her scissors we took the shirt off and in
03:42the meantime Dr. Malcolm Perry uh came in and he's uh on the medical staff he's a professor in the medical
03:50school senior to Dr. Carrico so he decided to do the tracheostomy and then Dr. Carrico said to me Don
03:59why don't you go ahead and do a cut down on that left leg and uh so I I went and did that
04:06okay to cut down is a very small operation but it has is a very important thing to do the um
04:13uh reason for doing it is that most patients will come in to the emergency room as be bled out where
04:21their blood volume is low and if the blood volume is low well then the heart doesn't have anything to
04:27pump and that is your cause of death well if you can replenish the blood volume quickly well then that
04:36causes a better chance of survival though so the cut down is uh to put a catheter in a vein so that you
04:45can uh get the fluid in or faster and uh the operation is to make an incision across the the front of the
04:55shin and dissect out the saphenous vein which is large vein that goes right up the front of the leg
05:02put a catheter make a little hole in the catheter put the catheter in there and uh then put a stitch
05:09around the vein to close it off and hold the catheter in place the nurse at the meantime has the uh
05:21bag hanging with the iv fluid in 500 cc's in a collar that she can pump up and when she does that
05:28well she uh it forces the fluid into the into the vein and uh so that's what i did then
05:39after i did that then dr perry had already completed the tracheostomy and i was uh looked up and then
05:49the president had heart had stopped or it wasn't running they put a monitor on the president found
05:55out his heart was not bleeding and so the uh and and so he external cardiac massage was being done
06:03by uh kemp clark the chief of neurosurgery and somebody relieved him and kemp clark went and
06:10picked up the head and stopped their resuscitation this wound is not compatible with life
06:16you're not dead quiet nobody knew what to say nobody said anything for the longest time
06:23then he said okay i let me and he looked at by that time the chiefs of all the surgical services
06:31were against the wall across the room from me and all in white coats and they had responded to the uh
06:37uh to the call that they needed help and so he said pointed them out i need to tell each of you
06:44individually what the wound is so you can say that later on and then he described the wound as about
06:53a three or four inch hole in the posterior cranium and then uh there's a bullet hole in the right temple
07:02so he described it that the bullet came through the temple into the cranial vault created a huge
07:11pressure in the cranial vault and when the bullet finally tumbled into the posterior wall it blew it out
07:18and he explained all that to individually to these five doctors seven doctors and those doctors knew what
07:26was happening and what happened to the president and the the wound that killed him and they never
07:32were called by the by the uh war commission so uh that didn't work and so after that i stood there
07:44and i couldn't leave because mrs kennedy was to my right and i couldn't get past her so i had to just
07:51stay there for a while but then eventually everybody left and i went around to look at the wound and i
07:58couldn't see it was laying on the pillow but i could see where it was then i left there and went into an
08:04adjacent room the uh x-ray waiting room was a large room and right in the middle of the room was lyndon
08:12johnson and he was telling people to go talk on the phone and and uh he was obviously he'd set the
08:20government up and he had taken control and then i looked around i couldn't see a single person i thought
08:28looked like secret service i couldn't see any weapons that were protecting him and i was a little
08:35uncomfortable being there myself because at that time we had no idea what was going on with our
08:41government we didn't know if the government would be intact or not but it made me feel good to know
08:46that he was right in the middle of the room and and he was the president he was absolutely fearless
08:53then i wondered why is he so absolutely fearless i mean because if it was a coup he'd be the next one
09:01to go so with that i left and and that's what i learned in the emergency in the wrong trauma room
09:10then uh later we uh found out that the residents and interns should not talk to each other about this
09:19and so we didn't and uh dr carico and i would have lunch together many times often just him and me
09:28and we never mentioned it to each other and uh so one thing i'd like to get started today is that the
09:40magic bullet was a product of the warren commission that that doesn't make any sense and i can go through
09:48these these uh bullets that fell on the uh but i think i'm out of town well so just so you know we
09:56will be giving you opportunity to go back to that because we are very interested in that and thank you
10:00for that um because of previous uh technical issues mr bolden if you can please give your opening statement
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