There is no wound to the back of JFK's head visible in the Zapruder film. After the initial push forward so many JFK conspiracy advocates like to ignore, there's the "back and to the left" motion that has become a virtual mantra for them. But that means the back right of JFK's head is visible to the camera. There is no large gaping wound there.
So no large back-of-the-head wound in the Zapruder film and no large back-of-the-head wound at the autopsy. The obvious conclusion is that the Parkland doctors were mistaken.
McClelland himself wavered in this description when speaking to Vincent Bugliosi for his JFK assassination encyclopedia, Reclaiming History. McClelland does not think the autopsy doctors are lying or trying to mislead anyone and he even stated that he may have drawn that wound too far back in his sketch for Josiah Thompson's book. Michael Baden's explanation, reported by Bugliosi, seems the best one for the discrepancies:
Since the thick growth of hair on Kennedy's head hadn't been shaved at Parkland, there's no way for the doctors to have seen the margins of the wound in the skin of the scalp. All they saw was the blood and brain tissue adhering to the hair. And that may have mostly been in the occipital area, because he was lying on his back and gravity would push his hair, blood, and brain tissue backward, so many of them probably assumed the exit wound was in the back of the head. But clearly, from the autopsy X-rays and photographs and the observations of the autopsy surgeons, the exit wound and defect was not in the occipital area. There was no defect or wound to the rear of Kennedy's head other than the entrance wound in the upper right part of his head.
That's from pages 407-408. No one thinks McClelland is lying or trying to misrepresent what he saw. He's just wrong. It happens.
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