Where is JFK’s brain? This mystery has perplexed America since 1966, when the brain of the 35th president suddenly disappeared from the National Archives.
More than half a century later, many people in the U.S. still wonder who was really behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy (JFK). But others have a completely different question: What happened to JFK’s brain?
President John F. Kennedy (far left) on November 22, 1963, just before his assassination. (Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration).
Although the body of the 35th president of the United States is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his brain has been missing since 1966. Was it stolen to conceal evidence? Taken by his brother? Or was the brain replaced before it disappeared?
Below is everything we know about the decades-long mystery surrounding the puzzling disappearance of President JFK’s brain.
The Assassination and the Kennedy Autopsy
The story of John F. Kennedy’s brain begins on the day he was killed. On November 22, 1963, the president was assassinated while riding in a car during a campaign parade in Dallas, Texas, alongside First Lady Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife.
That night, the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C. determined that the president had been shot twice from above and behind.
Illustration provided to the U.S. Congress showing one of the bullets passing 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 was missing.”
O’Neill Jr. observed closely as the 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 his book “End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy”, JFK’s brain was ultimately placed in a stainless steel container with a screw top and transferred to the National Archives. There, it was “kept in a safe room known only to JFK’s devoted former secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, while she organized the president’s papers.”
However, by 1966, the brain, along with tissue samples and other autopsy materials, had vanished. A subsequent investigation could not determine their whereabouts.
Image of the car carrying JFK during the assassination, with the president slumped in the backseat and First Lady Jacqueline leaning over the rear of the car, where a bodyguard is climbing in. (Photo: The Sun).
The Missing Brain
Where is JFK’s brain? While no one knows for sure, several theories have emerged over the decades.
Conspiracy theorists claim that JFK’s brain holds the truth about his death. Officially, the autopsy indicated that the president was shot twice from “above and behind.” This aligns with the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
View from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. (Photo: Getty Images)
However, one conspiracy theory suggests that Kennedy’s brain indicates the opposite – that the president was shot from the front, thus supporting the “grassy knoll” theory (which claims there was a second shooter, in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald, hiding in the grassy knoll). In fact, that was the conclusion of doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Proponents of this theory believe this is why JFK’s brain was stolen.
But author Swanson has a different idea. While he agrees that the brain was likely stolen, he suggests that the thief was none other than Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s brother.
“My conclusion is that Robert Kennedy took his brother’s brain,” Swanson writes in his book. “Not to cover up evidence of a conspiracy, but perhaps to conceal evidence of the true extent of President Kennedy’s health issues, or maybe to hide evidence of the amount of medication President Kennedy was using.”
Indeed, President Kennedy had many health issues that he concealed from the public. He also took various medications, including pain relievers, anti-anxiety drugs, stimulants, sleeping pills, and hormones due to his dangerous adrenal insufficiency.
The 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. (Photo: The Sun)
Whether JFK’s brain was stolen remains a mystery. But there is another mystery regarding the archival photos of the president’s brain. Is the brain in the official photographs actually JFK’s?
In 1998, a report from the Assassination Records Review Board raised a troubling question. They suggested that the JFK brain in the photographs was not accurate. “I am 90 to 95% sure that the photos in the Archives do not depict President Kennedy’s brain,” said Douglas Horne, head of military records analysis.
Horne added, “If that is true, it can only mean one thing: that medical evidence has been covered up.”
O’Neill – the FBI agent present at the scene of Kennedy’s assassination – also stated that the official photos of the brain did not match what he witnessed. “It looked almost like a complete brain,” which was entirely different from the brain that had been destroyed by bullets that O’Neill had seen.
The report also indicated discrepancies regarding who examined the brain, when, and whether the brain was cut in a certain way and how the photos were taken.
Ultimately, the story of JFK’s brain appears as mysterious as many aspects of his assassination. Was it stolen? Lost? Replaced? These are hypotheses that remain unresolved to this day.
But the American public may soon have more answers regarding the Kennedy assassination. While additional Kennedy records were released in 2021, more details will continue to be revealed in December 2022.
