Munchausen syndrome, or hospital addiction, is a condition where people fake illness to receive attention. Some patients construct amazingly complex lies and falsify symptoms with impressive resourcefulness, and then some are just silly. Here are a few particularly bizarre cases.

10The Wanderer

In 2005, a 20-year-old man appeared in a New Mexico hospital with chest pain. Based on his complaints, he was given surgery to investigate his problem. MRIs and surgery—an aortic wall biopsy—showed nothing unusual. Postoperative recovery should have been fine (and tests showed that it was), but he kept making complaints, all of which turned out to be false. He had been previously admitted to many different hospitals in different states, with a similar “problem.” He was sent to a psychiatrist.

Then, in 2009, he turned up 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi) away in Ohio with the same symptoms—only he said that due to a fictitious brain tumor he couldn’t undergo MRIs and that he was allergic to MRI dye and to many diagnostic medications. He also claimed to have had a heart transplant in Germany after a massive heart attack (of which no records could be found). The physician at the Ohio hospital later realized he’d been seeing the same patient on numerous separate occasions, under different names and birth dates, for six years.

9Wendy Scott

One of the few Munchausen patients to give her real name, Wendy Scott actually managed to recover from the disorder before her death—something many doctors had thought impossible. Before that, though, she was among the most severe cases documented. She claimed to have been a patient at over 600 hospitals, with an astonishingly high turnover rate. She was covered in scars from the 42 unnecessary operations she’d had while traveling through Europe seeking care.

She told the New York Times that she stopped lying about illness when she turned 30. She credited her cat with helping her recover, and later reached out to other Munchausen patients to help them. In a cruel twist of fate, 20 years later she became ill for real. She died of intestinal cancer in 1999—an unfortunate example of “the boy who cried wolf” not being taken seriously. It’s also possible that all the diagnostic procedures increased her risk of cancer.

8Lupus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (often just called “lupus”) is an autoimmune inflammatory disorder that affects the whole body, usually attacking the heart, lungs, nervous system, joints, skin, and kidneys.

A 29-year-old man came to the University of Utah Medical Center with right flank pain, nausea, vomiting, and visible blood in the urine. He said he was severely allergic to intravenous contrast dye. He was admitted for possible lupus. He had been to other hospitals before, many of which he couldn’t name, and said he had received several diagnoses. In the past five years, he had allegedly been diagnosed with a kidney stone and lupus, and tested positive for HIV.

Examination showed no abnormalities except for pinpricks on his left index finger. He gave the name of his primary doctor but said they had cut off contact as he could no longer afford to pay his bills. As more tests were performed, the man’s previous doctor rang to say he had a history of showing up with false symptoms, that his HIV test had come back negative, and that the doctor had cut off contact because she didn’t feel equipped to work on a psychological disorder. She also said that the patient was often eager to obtain narcotics. Doctors concluded that he had been pricking his finger to make it appear as though there was blood in his urine.

7Ms. J’s Weekend Trips

A 21-year-old woman, known as “Ms. J,” regularly appeared in her local hospital to manage the type 1 diabetes she’d had since childhood. She started coming in with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a medical emergency where, due to a shortage of insulin, the body starts burning fatty acids and producing acidic ketones. Symptoms and complications include dehydration, vomiting, difficulty breathing, swelling of the brain, and acute kidney failure.

Investigation revealed that every time she came in, her husband was away on a trip and she had arranged pet-sitting for her dog. She usually came in early in the weekend, with incidents resolving before the start of the following workweek or the husband’s return. On her third visit for the same DKA symptoms in two months, Ms. J was sent to a psychiatrist. It was determined that she did know how to dose her insulin properly. She was neglecting it on purpose to get attention while her husband was gone.

6Bacteremia

A young woman came to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas with bacteremia, or bacteria in the bloodstream. Bacteremia can arise spontaneously and may sort itself out, but it can also lead to very serious infections like sepsis, pneumonia, and meningitis. Because of this, doctors carried out extensive testing. Tests showed no problem with the woman’s immune system and no sepsis.

The fact that the woman was a medical technologist (and would thus know how to fake symptoms and have access to medical equipment) aroused suspicion in the hospital, so her room was searched during an X-ray. Doctors found a purse that contained a Petri dish with bacterial colonies of E.coli and S. aureus growing in it, needles, a syringe, and a tourniquet. Not exactly what you’d typically expect to find in someone’s purse. They confronted the patient, who agreed to get psychiatric help but denied injecting herself with bacteria. She held up the purse she thought she’d emptied of the incriminating evidence . . . which would have gone better had a forgotten needle and syringe not fallen out. Oops.

On a more solemn note, patients have died from injecting themselves with bacteria, so the doctors’ concern was not unfounded.

5Faking Cancer With A Badly Forged Note

People faking cancer for the sympathy of friends and relatives do the rounds every so often—Mindy Taylor, Jessica Vega, and Ashley Kirilow, for example. However, a Texas woman took it further by actually going to the hospital to seek chemotherapy. She told doctors she’d had treatment for cancer of the small intestine in another state and wanted to continue in the new hospital—Baylor University Medical Center.

She went to an oncologist with abdominal scars and alopecia (baldness), purportedly from previous chemotherapy. The oncologist asked for medical records from the old hospital and received essentially the same treatment as a middle school teacher when a kid hasn’t done their homework—a really, really badly forged note. The surgical pathology report she presented had spelling errors and medically unlikely statements. It also looked like she’d photocopied and scanned sections of the report, literally pasting bits of it together.

Another hospital later stated that the abdominal scars were from a car accident, not surgery. That didn’t stop the insistent patient, as she went to several other doctors with the fake history.

4The Man Who Really Wanted A Heart Attack

A retired 67-year-old seaman developed shortness of breath and chest pain after a journey to Cumbria. He gave a history of two heart attacks in the previous three years, and severe angina afterward. He was admitted to hospital with diagnosis of pulmonary edema (fluid in the lung) and possible myocardial infarction (heart attack).

Following treatment, he had no further pain and was discharged after five days. Four months later, he came to the emergency department with what looked like cardiac arrest. He got better after cardiac massage before doctors arrived and was later treated for pulmonary edema.

The next morning, he was totally healed. People got suspicious and confronted him, then took a picture for future reference before discharging him. Apparently with no impulse control, he came back to the emergency department that same afternoon, appearing to have cardiac arrest. He “woke up” and scarpered when a nurse whispered in his ear that a doctor who’d seen him earlier that day was coming.

3Purple Marker Rash

Thought probably not an actual Munchausen sufferer, one child recently exhibited some of the same behavior. A 10-year-old girl turned up in a Los Angeles clinic in 2014 with purple rings under her eyes. She said the rings had been there for the last 12 hours. It was reported as a “bilateral suborbital rash.” A dermatologist guessed at ecchymosis (escape of blood from blood vessels under the skin, causing skin discoloration), amyloidosis (protein build-up disrupting normal function), or connective tissue disease.

However, since her eyes were working perfectly and the “rashes” had an odd shape and color, staff rubbed them with alcohol wipes and they disappeared. The girl admitted to having colored them in with a purple marker. It’s not unusual for kids to feign illness—to avoid school, for example—but it’s bizarre that this girl actually went to the hospital for what was essentially creative face paint.

2Simulating Immunodeficiency

A man in his thirties visited the outpatient department of a large hospital. He said that he’d lost over 20 kilograms (44 lb) over the past seven months and was experiencing pallor and lethargy. Tests showed severe anemia and very severe hypoalbuminemia (low levels of albumin in the blood).

He was diagnosed with celiac disease based on duodenal atrophy and ulcers (the duodenum is the first part of the small intestine) and ongoing inflammation in the small intestine. When he didn’t improve after avoiding gluten, doctors thought he might have Crohn’s disease. He was given high doses of drugs like prednisone (a strong immunosuppressant). Measurement of his antibodies showed profound—take a deep breath for this one—hypogammaglobulinemia. He was referred to another hospital with possible common variable immune deficiency, a condition that increases the risk of getting infections.

More and more treatments were tried with no success and no change in symptoms, and the gastroenterology team became suspicious. They pointed to the man’s abuse of NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) over the past year. He denied this, but his family later found hidden packets of a codeine/Ibuprofen combination on him. This was a particularly bad case due to the expense and invasiveness of the drugs used on him to no avail. Once the fraud was discovered, the man’s symptoms disappeared.

1Stabbing Nails Into Her Neck

We think the title of the case report says it all: “Stabbing nails into the neck: an unusual self-damaging behavior mandating neurosurgery.” Stabbing nails. Into the neck.

A 38-year-old woman presented with severe neck pain following a car accident four months prior. After the car accident, she had briefly gone unconscious but suffered no amnesia. Her CT scan at the time showed no abnormalities. When she turned up at the hospital, an X-ray showed a needle beside the second vertebra, the pivot on which the first vertebra rotates the head. There was no sign of an injury on the skin where the needle went in. She did not explain how it got there and denied doing it herself. She was given surgery to remove the needle and went home fine, only to return one month later with neck pain and a weak right side of the body. Imaging found a new nail in her neck, requiring another surgery.

Tip: If you’re going to fake illness to get surgery, please don’t do it in the vicinity of your spinal cord. That’s pretty important.

Elle blogs at darquessedreams.blogspot.com.

Especially when we’re sick and vulnerable, we rely on health-care providers to treat us. We depend on their knowledge, training, skills, and compassion. We expect them to help us to heal so that we can return to our duties and responsibilities as employers or employees, spouses, parents, neighbors, and friends.

We certainly don’t expect to get worse as a result of being hospitalized. However, there’s a chance that, in fact, we will get worse as there are 10 ways a hospital stay can make us sicker.

10 Post-Hospital Syndrome

Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Yale School of Medicine has coined the term “post-hospital syndrome” to identify a temporary period during which patients are susceptible to an illness following a hospital stay. This requires their readmission within 30 days of their initial discharge.

The cause of readmission ranges from a hospital-acquired infection (HAI), stress experienced during hospitalization, sleep deprivation during the hospital stay, a lack of nutrition or exercise, lowered immune system functioning, and depression. Research conducted in 2009 shows that, among Medicare patients, 2.6 million discharged patients (20 percent) were readmitted to the hospital within a month of their discharge.

9 Hospital Food Errors

A Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority study found that, between January 2009 and June 2014, hospital staff committed 285 errors related to patients’ meals—181 of which were related to allergies—due to charting errors and communication mistakes.

Eight caused “serious harm to patients.” In one case, a patient with a seafood allergy was given fish and had to be “injected with epinephrine, given several intravenous drugs,” and relocated to an intensive-care unit for observation.

Other patients who were supposed to fast were given food or food that did not accord with their prescribed diets. The errors occurred throughout the “dietary process,” from the ordering to the delivery of meals.

8 Food Denial

In an article in the online journal BMJ Quality and Safety, several Johns Hopkins Hospital doctors contend that the practice of withholding patients’ food for eight hours prior to surgery is unnecessary and potentially dangerous. Even worse, in some cases, patients may have to wait days before hospitals allow them to eat in case they need to be anesthetized for surgery.

Patients’ immune systems could be compromised by denying them sleep and nutrition. Inadequate nutrition, suffered by half of hospital patients, could lead to “inflammation, muscle breakdown, and organ damage.”

Dr. Martin Makary, one of the authors of the article, called the need for an eight-hour fasting period before surgery a “myth.” He and his colleagues observed that it’s safe for patients to consume a high-carbohydrate beverage two hours before surgery. He also recommends that patients be allowed to eat food other than hospital meals during their hospital stays.

7 Infections

Contaminated medical equipment, faulty surgical incisions, and too many antibiotics contribute to HAIs caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The magazine Consumer Reports rated hospitals based on their number of infections related to surgical sites, catheter or urinary tract infections, and bloodline infections. A year later, they added C. diff and two common “drug-resistant bacterial infections that can spread easily and are potentially fatal.”

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 650,000 patients acquired almost 722,000 HAIs in 2011. Daily, 200 patients die of these infections during hospitalization.

High rates of HAIs occur even in prestigious hospitals such as Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Strict infection-control protocols, [limited use of antibiotics, and] cleaning hospital rooms and medical equipment” are effective measures in the reduction or elimination of these infections.

In US states with lax reporting requirements, many hospitals “upcode” HAIs, assigning them false billing codes which are difficult to detect. In this way, these hospitals avoid the loss of federal payments due to penalties for the occurrence of HAIs.

One proposed solution is to require hospitals to report all HAIs, including the names of infected patients, the effects of the infections, and the infections’ root cause[s]. This proposal also suggests increasing the number of hospitals targeted by audits.

6 Poor Care Of Elderly Patients

Elderly patients tend to receive worse care than other patients. As a result, many of them leave the hospital in worse shape, physically and psychologically, than when they were admitted. Older patients are sometimes not fed properly, do not get enough exercise, or do not receive sufficient pain control.

Often, oxygen tanks or intravenous (IV) poles prevent the elderly from getting out of bed. Doctors perform unnecessary procedures on these patients and prescribe “redundant or potentially harmful medications.”

The elderly are deprived of sleep in noisy wards or because their vital signs are checked frequently throughout the night. Younger patients are more resilient than seniors, so older patients may have a harder time than younger patients in recovering from such treatment.

Some hospitals separate elderly patients from others, removing IV tubes and encouraging them to get out of bed to eat in a common dining room. The focus in such hospitals is on elderly patients’ ability to care for themselves at home.

However, improved care for seniors is not a high priority for most hospitals because memory loss and the inability to walk, unlike HAIs, are not debilities for which hospitals are penalized by the government. “If you don’t measure it, you can’t fix it,” said Ken Covinsky, a physician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, Division of Geriatrics.

5 Reduced Care

To survive in poor economic environments, small hospitals often merge with large chains. Typically, the US government doesn’t monitor these mergers or their effects on patient care.

The goal of these mergers may be “to cut overlapping services, negotiate better deals with insurance companies, and share in the cost savings.” However, some services may no longer be provided at all because decisions about health care are based more on profit or ideology than on patient care.

Even when state governments provide some oversight, it’s not focused on retaining or increasing care. Most of the regulations concerning patient services were developed when the number of hospitals was increasing rather than decreasing. In some cases, declines in services are ideological in nature, as when hospitals founded by religions organizations refuse to provide abortions.

4 Poor Staff Hygiene

In some cases, patients are worse off after hospitalization due to poor staff hygiene. Sometimes, doctors don’t wash their hands as often as they should. Nurses, tasked with reminding physicians and surgeons to do so, don’t think it’s their responsibility to “police the doctors.”

If they were to offer such reminders, nurses said, they’d fear reprimands. Doctors also don’t want to be taken to task by nurses because it implies that the doctors aren’t aware of the need for sanitary practices.

To combat the problem of poor staff hygiene, Internet sites grade hospitals on patient safety. The federal government also maintains an online database based on patient records.

3 Missing And Malfunctioning Equipment

Two of the many problems faced by Princess Margaret Hospital in Eastern St. Thomas, Jamaica, are equipment failure and a lack of basic equipment. The former problem is being addressed by the construction of a new ward and by renovating existing areas of the facility.

Off the record, though, the hospital’s staff complains of an air conditioner that has malfunctioned for months. The unit should cool the operating room, making surgeons and other staff comfortable during surgery. The air conditioner also keeps equipment cool so that it will function properly. Patients for whom general anesthesia is not required during an operation also suffer because of the heat.

According to the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Janine Hill, air conditioning repairs are scheduled for the future and the hospital hopes to acquire an ultrasound machine. However, she admitted, “There is still a need for other things.” Some of those things include a hematology analyzer and other basic equipment common to hospitals.

2 Sick Doctors

Although doctors often feel obligated to work while sick, they put their patients with weakened immune systems at risk of infection when the doctors do so. In a survey of health-care providers (including 280 doctors) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 83 percent admitted to working while sick at least once during the past year.

Their symptoms included diarrhea, fever, and cold or flu symptoms. These health-care providers worked while sick because they didn’t want to let their colleagues or patients down.

In addition, they indicated that peer pressure was a consideration because colleagues criticize doctors who take sick days. Previous surveys have shown similar results, indicating that doctors respond to workplace pressures to work when ill.

1 ‘Never Events’ And Serious Untoward Incidents

“Never events” (occurrences that should never happen) can make patients sicker. These preventable incidents, such as operating on the wrong part of a patient’s body or leaving foreign objects inside a patient’s body, can seriously harm or kill patients.

In addition, serious untoward incidents (SUIs) can inconvenience, injure, or kill patients. SUIs include patients harming themselves by falling from heights, doctors failing to act according to test results and causing a need for further treatment, staff calling female patients for breast screenings due to faulty equipment, and dentists extracting the wrong teeth.

Hospitals should encourage health-care providers to report “unsafe clinical practice,” a Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said, “[and such reports should be investigated . . . properly.”

Gary Pullman lives south of Area 51, which, according to his family and friends, explains “a lot.” His 2016 urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt, available on Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle edition, was published by The Wild Rose Press. An instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he writes several blogs, including Chillers and Thrillers: A Blog on the Theory and Practice of Writing Horror Fiction and Nightmare Novels and Other Tales of Terror.

By now, even casual history buffs are familiar with Dallas’s Dealey Plaza on the afternoon of November 23, 1963. JFK next to Jackie in the limo, the governor of Texas in front of him. Abraham Zapruder filming from atop a cement partition near the grassy knoll, Orville Nix recording from the opposite perspective. And, of course, Oswald perched at a sixth-floor window, overlooking it all.

However, fewer folks know the harrowing, often gory details of what transpired immediately afterward. Here are ten tales from Parkland Hospital, President John F. Kennedy’s next—and final—stop that terrible day.

Related: 10 Pieces Of Evidence Pointing To Oswald As JFK’s Killer

10 Jackie Wouldn’t Let Them Take JFK Inside

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who famously splayed himself over JFK and the First Lady seconds after the shooting, knew the president was dead. As the limo floored it toward Parkland, Hill flashed a thumbs-down signal to the agents in the follow-up car, indicating how grave the situation was.

Still, that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try. Except that when they pulled into the Parkland receiving area exactly eight minutes after the shooting…Jackie Kennedy wouldn’t let her husband go.

Hill recalls the urgent stalemate: “I asked Mrs. Kennedy, I said, ‘Please let us help the president.’ No response. She had ahold of him, and she wouldn’t let go. So I pleaded with her again and still no response.”

It’s well documented that, in the weeks after JFK’s death, Jackie became a protector of her slain husband’s Camelot legacy. In fact, this role began then and there. From the gaping head wound—a good portion of the brain had been blown out—Jackie Kennedy knew JFK was either unsavable or already dead.

She was simply not going to let the media capture the extent of this gore on camera. Hill continues:

“I realized the problem was she didn’t want anybody to see the condition he was in because it was horrible. So I took off my suit coat, I covered up his head, his upper back. As soon as I did that, she let go.”^[1]

9 Matter of Life & Death

Immediately following the fatal headshot at Dealey Plaza, Jackie Kennedy can be seen climbing out of her seat and onto the trunk of the convertible. Horrifyingly, she was retrieving a large piece of her husband’s brain and skull.

She was able to collect the fragment before Secret Service agent Clint Hill hopped aboard and dove on her and JFK, a human shield. As her husband’s head rested in her lap, the First Lady collected additional chunks of tissue from the limousine seat and floor.

Arriving at Parkland, Dr. Marion Jenkins was fighting in vain to save JFK’s life in Trauma Room One when a traumatized Jackie did her best to help: she handed him all the brain and skull matter she’d managed to salvage. Forty-five years later, Jenkins’ daughter shared a recorded exchange she had with her father before his death. “My father began manually squeezing oxygen into [JFK’s] lungs and administering resuscitative drugs,” the daughter, Christie Jenkins, recounts.

“Kennedy’s blood was dripping down my dad’s trousers and into his shoes. The team realized the head wound was so massive the president just couldn’t survive.” That was the moment Jackie poked him in the elbow, leaned forward, and hopefully, handed him the remnants of his head she’d collected. ^[2]

8 A Sobering Faux Pas

Upon entering Parkland, anyone who took one look at the president’s condition knew he was either already dead or unsavable. Given his gaping head wound and motionless body, it didn’t take a doctor or even a nurse to see that JFK was gone.

Still, this was the President of the United States—plus, his wife was at his side. So the surgeons at Parkland were going to treat JFK as if he were savable and hope for a miracle. Among other emergency measures, Dr. Charles Baxter was administering closed-chest cardiac compressions in an attempt to restore some semblance of a normal heartbeat.

Then another doctor, neurosurgeon William Kemp Clark, burst into the trauma room. According to Joe Goldstrich, who as a 25-year-old medical student was the youngest staffer to tend to the president, Clark saw Baxter’s futile effort and exclaimed, “My God, Charlie, what are you doing? His brains are on the floor.”

Clark hadn’t, of course, seen Jackie before he blurted out the macabre faux pas. No one—doctor, nurse, or the First Lady herself—could pretend any longer that what they were doing had any hope of saving JFK’s life.

“When he did see her, I was right between them,” Goldstrich recalls. “I saw her expression when she heard what he had said. That’s another moment that’s indelibly imprinted on my brain.”^[3]

7 A Troubling Tracheotomy

Then as now, it is common for someone in as grave a situation as the president to have a tracheal tube inserted for easier breathing or administering certain medicines. At Parkland that day, this decision was made all the more obvious given that a bullet had passed directly through Kennedy’s neck—a wound suffered prior to the fatal headshot.

Coincidentally, Joe Goldstrich—the same young medical student who recalls the look on the First Lady’s face when one doctor admonished another’s hopeless heart massages—had been studying up on tracheotomies just that morning. In the same 2020 interview from the previous entry, he remembers seeing JFK’s neck wound and thinking he could be intubated right through the wound—no cutting necessary.

But other doctors—all his seniors—apparently thought otherwise and cut over the wound at the front of JFK’s neck before inserting the tube. Goldstrich said not speaking up was his only regret about the medical care Kennedy received that day.

This is because cutting over the wound wasn’t just unnecessary—it destroyed evidence. By eliminating the original shape of the wound, doctors made it impossible for autopsy specialists to determine whether it was an entrance or exit wound. And, therefore, whether the bullet’s likely origin was from behind (the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked) or the front (the now-infamous grassy knoll).^[4]

6 Cold Calls: Pranking Parkland

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Initial news of the shooting, including early reports that the president may have been struck in the head, prompted well-wishers across the country. Unfortunately, it also brought out the creeps and crazies.

According to historian William Manchester, as surgeons tried desperately to resuscitate the president in the operating room, something else entirely was going on in the operator room. There, the telephone switchboard was alight with incoming calls.

Unfortunately, while some of the calls were legit, most were not. This is because the calls from genuine insiders—for example, Ethel Kennedy, JFK’s sister-in-law—were patched straight to the Army Signal Corps. So the majority of the direct-dial, long-distance calls came from, as Manchester writes, “the curious, the disturbed, the downright demented.”

He continues: “A woman in Toledo identified herself as ‘The Underground’; she asserted that she had occult powers which would keep Kennedy alive. A man said, ‘You n****r lovers, you killed our president.’ Another man threatened an operator: ‘I know who you are, and you’d better be careful when you start your car.’”

“Most disquieting,” again per Manchester, “was a young boy who called three times, talking to a different operator each time. His approach never varied. ‘I want to talk to my Daddy,’ he would begin plaintively. Asked who his father was, he would say, ‘My Daddy—President Kennedy.’ Then he would giggle and ring off.”^[5]

5 “If Thou Livest…”

Since JFK was Catholic, a priest was summoned to perform the church’s Last Rites. With updates on Kennedy’s status limited, the news circulated on broadcasts—along with reassurances that this didn’t necessarily mean he was near death. Better safe than eternally sorry.

Soon, local parish priest Father Oscar Huber arrived at Parkland and was led into the trauma room. The president was already covered in a white sheet, with only his feet exposed. He was motionless.

“I did not speak to him,” Huber wrote later because “it was evident he could not answer.” Huber pulled down the sheet below JFK’s nose. Seeing the fixed eyes and gaping head wound, Huber became “sure that he was dead.”

Still, the idea that he would refuse to perform the Last Rites on a just-deceased, assassinated president was unfathomable. So Huber opened his ritual book, anointed the president’s bloody forehead with holy oil, and began his blessing: “If thou livest…”

Concluding the rite, he comforted Jackie and assured her that her husband’s spirit had not yet left his body. In a televised interview a few days later, Huber confirmed that the sacrament was given “conditionally because we didn’t know whether he was living or dead.”

Outside—and despite Secret Service warnings to keep quiet—Huber became among the first unofficial sources to reveal that JFK had indeed died. Though Huber denied it afterward, Time Magazine’s Hugh Sidey reported Huber responding “He’s dead all right” to an inquiry about the president’s condition.^[6]

4 “Mr. President…”

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who described the vice presidency as not being worth “a bucket of warm piss,” was two cars behind JFK. He was with his wife, Lady Bird, and Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough. Despite initial reports that Johnson was either wounded or suffered a heart attack, he was unharmed.

Arriving at Parkland, agents yanked LBJ to his feet and hurried him inside. They settled in a windowless room removed from the trauma ward. There, LBJ, Secret Service agent Thomas Johns, and JFK aide Kenneth O’Donnell discussed an exit strategy should the worst come to pass. “Quick plans were made about how to get to the car, who’ll ride in what,” Lady Bird recalled.

Then, Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff came into the room. “Mr. President…” he began. Johnson’s head jerked. Kilduff was asking permission to announce JFK’s death to the media.

Despite getting the official word of his impromptu promotion in the most macabre manner possible, Kilduff claims Johnson reacted immediately. “No,” LBJ said, “I think I had better get out of here and get back to the plane before you announce it. We don’t know whether this is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they are after me as well.”

Just before Kilduff’s announcement, LBJ left Parkland for Love Field Airport, where Air Force One awaited. Lady Bird saw flags atop the hospital drop to half-mast as they sped away.^[7]

3 “This Is MY Body…”

Following the official announcement of the president’s death, JFK’s security detail placed his body in a coffin and began transporting it down the hall. There, they ran straight into local officials, including Dallas County Coroner Earl Rose. What ensued was among the stupidest “federal vs. local authority” standoffs in history.

Confronting JFK’s detail—some of whom had the president’s blood smeared on them—Rose had the audacity to insist that, per local law, an autopsy needed to be performed before the president could leave the premises. When Kennedy’s people refused, Rose reportedly exclaimed: “This is MY body.” Earl was, in part, capitalizing on an oversight: There was no law saying that murdering the president was a federal crime (in reaction to this incident, Congress rectified this in late 1963).

The Secret Service pushed past the local lawmen and proceeded, with JFK’s casket, to Dallas Love Field and Air Force One.

When the House Select Committee on Assassinations reopened the case in the late 1970s, Rose testified that Texas law made it the responsibility of the justice of the peace to determine the cause of death. Here’s a hint, Earl: He was shot in the head in front of dozens of witnesses.

The posthumous power struggle was portrayed in the 2013 film Parkland, which among other A-listers stars Paul Giamatti as amateur filmmaker Abraham Zapruder.^[8]

2 Irony of Ironies

Two days later, accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was being led through the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. It was a routine transfer from the city jail to the county one.

Of course, nothing is routine when you’re handling the suspected murderer of the president. And with Dallas police already sensitive about their city’s hostile portrayal in the press, they took pains to accommodate TV crews and newspaper cameramen hoping for a shot of the killer in cuffs.

Too accommodating. Out popped local nightclub owner Jack Ruby who, for reasons still unexplained, shot Oswald in the abdomen at point-blank range. It was the first murder ever committed on live television.

The paddy wagon moved, and an ambulance was brought in. Oswald was whisked away to…where else? Parkland Hospital. In fact, one of the surgeons who treated him, Dr. Malcom Parry, had also tended to the president.

While Perry and his team were obligated by their Hippocratic Oath to treat Oswald as best they could, they sure as hell weren’t doing it in the same room as Kennedy. Oswald was intentionally taken to Operating Room #5 instead.^[9]

1 Oddest. Memo. Ever.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

On November 27—five days after JFK’s death, three after Oswald’s—Parkland Hospital Administrator Charles Jack “CJ” Price sent one of the weirdest thank you letters in the history of office memorandums. While well-intending, the note to all hospital employees reads like redundant, macabre overkill—like an executive grandstanding on paper when an in-person assembly would have sufficed. The note begged to be leaked, and leaked it was.

Its first two paragraphs are a cold, just-the-facts review of the previous week’s events. “At 12:38 pm, Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally were brought to the Emergency Room of Parkland Memorial Hospital after being struck down by the bullets of an assassin.” The next paragraph gives the same weight to Oswald’s death. Captain Obvious, meet Administrator Tone Deaf.

Like something out of a tour brochure, the memo then embarks on a numbered list detailing the history that had occurred there. Price recounts that Parkland had:

1) Become the temporary seat of government of the United States
2) Become the temporary seat of government of the State of Texas
3) Become the site of the death of the 35th President
4) Become the site of the ascendency of the 36th President

…and so on. A few sentences congratulating everyone on their composure and professionalism, and the poor-taste pep talk ends with a signature and—just so reporters get it right, no doubt—Price’s printed-out name and title.^[10]