The mystery of the disappearing brain of former US President Kennedy

Where is JFK's brain? This mystery has puzzled America since 1966, when the brain of the 35th president suddenly disappeared from the National Archives.

More than half a century later, many in America still wonder who was really behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy (JFK). But others had an entirely different question: What happened to JFK's brain?

President John F. Kennedy (far left) on November 22, 1963, just before his assassination.

Although the 35th US president's body is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, his brain has been missing since 1966. Was it stolen to conceal evidence? Was taken by his brother? Or was the brain replaced before it disappeared?

Here's everything we know about the decades-old mystery surrounding the puzzling disappearance of President JFK's brain.

Kennedy's assassination and autopsy

The story of John F. Kennedy's brain begins the day he was killed. On November 22, 1963, the president was assassinated while sitting in a car, participating in a campaign parade in Dallas (Texas) with first lady Jacqueline, Governor of Texas John Connally and his wife his?

That night, an autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington DC determined that the president had been hit by two bullets from above and from behind.

An illustration provided to the US Congress showing one of the bullets going through JFK's brain.

FBI agent Francis X. O'Neill Jr., who was present at the autopsy, recalled: 'There wasn't much brain left. More than half of the brain has been lost."

O'Neill Jr watched closely as doctors removed the brain from the skull and placed it 'in a white jar'. The doctors also noted in the autopsy report that "the brain was preserved and separated from the body for further study".

According to author James Swanson in End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, the JFK brain was eventually placed in a screw-top stainless steel barrel and shipped to the National Archives. There, it was 'placed in a secure room known only to JFK's devoted former secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, while she sorted through the president's papers'.

But by 1966, the brain, as well as other tissue samples and autopsy material, had disappeared. A subsequent investigation was still unable to determine their whereabouts.

Image of the car carrying JFK during the assassination, the President collapsed in the back seat and First Lady Jacqueline leaned over the back of the car, where a bodyguard was climbing.

The brain disappears

Where is JFK's brain? Although no one knows for sure, a number of theories have emerged over the past few decades.

Conspiracy theorists claim that JFK's brain holds the truth about his death. Officially, an autopsy showed the President had been shot twice from 'above and behind'. This is consistent with the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President from the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository.

View from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository.

However, a conspiracy theory that Kennedy's brain indicates the opposite - that the President was shot from the front, thus supporting the "grass mound" theory (there was a second assassin, besides Lee Harvey Oswald, hiding in the grassy mound). In fact, that is the conclusion of doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. According to those who believe in this theory, that is why JFK's brain was stolen.

But author Swanson had a different idea. Although he agreed that the brain was likely stolen, he assumed that the person who stole it was none other than Robert F. Kennedy, JFK's younger brother.

'My conclusion is that Robert Kennedy took his brother's brain,' Swanson writes in his book. 'Not to conceal evidence of a conspiracy but perhaps to conceal evidence of extent. actually President Kennedy's illness, or perhaps to conceal evidence of the amount of medication President Kennedy was taking'.

Indeed, President Kennedy had many health problems that he kept hidden from the public. He also took a variety of medications, including painkillers, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, sleeping pills and hormones because of his dangerously low adrenal function.

The 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.

Whether JFK's brain was stolen is a mystery. But there is another mystery about archival photographs of the president's brain. Is the brain in the official photo JFK's?

In 1998, a report from the Assassination Records Review Board raised a troubling question. They claim that the JFK brain in the photographs is incorrect. "I'm 90 to 95 percent certain that the photos in the Archives are not of President Kennedy's brain," said Douglas Horne, chief of military records analysis.

Mr Horne added, "If that's the case, that could mean only one thing, that medical evidence has been covered up."

O'Neill - an FBI agent present at the scene of Kennedy's assassination - also said that the official pictures of the brain did not match what he had witnessed. 'It looks almost like a complete brain', completely different from the bullet-destroyed brains O'Neill had seen.

The report also found differences in who had the brain examined, when, and whether or not the brain was cropped in a certain way and the type of picture taken.

In the end, the story of JFK's brain seems to be as mysterious as many aspects of his assassination. Was it stolen? Lost? Has been replaced? These are theories that have yet to be elucidated.

But the American public may soon have more answers about the Kennedy assassination. Although further disclosure of the Kennedy dossier is already underway in 2021, more details will continue to be revealed in December 2022.