After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, his brain was removed during the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, preserved in a stainless steel container, and eventually went missing. It has never been recovered. The disappearance, discovered in 1966 when the brain was found to be absent from the National Archives, remains one of the most enduring mysteries surrounding the assassination.
The Autopsy and Brain Removal
Kennedy suffered a catastrophic head wound in Dealey Plaza. Doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas described a large wound in the right rear of the skull with massive loss of bone and scalp tissue. Dr. Charles Baxter, one of the treating physicians, noted that portions of the brain were literally lying on the table. Dr. Marion Thomas Jenkins, who held Kennedy’s head during resuscitation efforts, described brain tissue extruding from a defect so large that even the cerebellum, the lower rear portion of the brain, had protruded from the wound.
After Kennedy was pronounced dead, his body was flown to Washington. Jacqueline Kennedy authorized a partial autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where Commander James Humes led the examination along with Drs. J. Thornton Boswell and Pierre Finck. The brain was removed for a separate, more detailed examination, which is standard practice in cases involving severe head trauma. It was placed in a stainless steel container with formalin, a preservative solution, to allow the tissue to harden before further study.
Two Brain Examinations, One Week Apart
What happened next has become deeply contested. According to a timeline analysis conducted by Douglas Horne, who served as Chief Analyst for Military Records on the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), there were not one but two supplementary brain examinations. Horne concluded that Kennedy’s actual brain was examined on the morning of November 25, 1963, just three days after the assassination. A second examination of a different brain took place on December 2, one week later. Both sessions were supervised by Humes and Boswell.
Horne’s analysis, presented in testimony to the House Oversight Committee, went further. He argued that the fourteen brain photographs currently held in the National Archives are not photographs of Kennedy’s brain at all. He pointed out that the official photographer present at the brain examination, as well as one of the FBI agents who attended the autopsy, both disputed the authenticity of the photos in the archive. In Horne’s view, the photographs on file today depict the substitute brain from the December 2 session, while the photographs from the actual November 25 examination of Kennedy’s brain never entered the official record.
A Brain Weight That Doesn’t Add Up
One of the most puzzling details in the official record is the reported brain weight: 1,500 grams. That figure is roughly average for an intact adult male brain. But Kennedy’s brain was far from intact. Multiple witnesses at Parkland Hospital described losing close to a third of the brain tissue through the massive skull wound. A 2009 paper published in the journal Medical Hypotheses called this one of three “gross errors” that invalidated the postmortem examination, noting that a brain missing that much tissue could not plausibly weigh what a normal, undamaged brain weighs. This discrepancy has fueled suspicion that the brain described in official documents is not the one removed from Kennedy’s body.
Transfer to Robert Kennedy
The brain’s chain of custody is traceable up to a point. After the autopsy and supplementary examinations, the stainless steel container holding the brain, along with an original signed autopsy report and other materials, remained in the custody of the Secret Service. In April 1965, those materials were transferred from the Secret Service to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother.
On October 31, 1966, Robert Kennedy executed a deed of gift transferring a collection of assassination-related materials to the National Archives. But the brain, the stainless steel container, and the original signed autopsy report were not among the items returned. When the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) later investigated, Kennedy family attorney Burke Marshall confirmed that Robert Kennedy had made those materials “permanently inaccessible.” He declined to explain how or why.
Why Would Someone Want It to Disappear?
Several theories have circulated for decades. The most widely discussed, and the one many historians consider most plausible, is that Robert Kennedy disposed of the brain to protect his brother’s dignity and legacy. The concern may have been that the preserved brain could become a macabre relic, displayed or studied in ways the family found unbearable. There were also worries that further examination could reveal details about Kennedy’s broader health issues, including the Addison’s disease and extensive medication use that the family had long sought to keep private.
A more controversial theory holds that the brain was destroyed to prevent independent forensic analysis that might contradict the Warren Commission’s conclusion that all shots came from behind. Horne, the ARRB analyst, suggested that Commander Humes may have tampered with the brain before the official examination to remove bullet evidence indicating a shot from the front. Under this theory, destroying the physical specimen would eliminate the most important piece of evidence that could challenge the single-gunman finding. No definitive proof supports either explanation.
What the Official Investigations Found
Multiple investigations have examined the medical evidence over the decades, but none has resolved the brain’s disappearance. The Warren Commission completed its work in 1964 before the brain went missing. In January 1967, the three original autopsy doctors reexamined the available photographs and X-rays and reaffirmed their original findings, though they noted there was “no evidence of a bullet or a major portion of a bullet in the body.” In early 1968, a four-doctor panel conducted its own review of surviving X-rays and photographs.
The ARRB, established by Congress in the 1990s, took depositions from ten people who participated in or witnessed the autopsy, plus five of the Dallas treating physicians. The board was not empowered to draw conclusions or make findings of fact. It could only attempt to “clarify the record.” The brain itself was never located, and the National Archives inventory today acknowledges that some documents related to the assassination are missing. The stainless steel container, the original autopsy report that accompanied it, and the brain have not resurfaced in the more than sixty years since Robert Kennedy took possession of them.