On 22 November 1963 Earl Rose was in his office at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas when the bad news came. Across the corridor in trauma room 1, doctors (see Obituary: Malcolm O Perry, BMJ 2010;340:c922, doi:10.1136/bmj.c922) had lost the short battle to save the life of US President John F Kennedy, who less than an hour before had suffered severe head wounds from gunfire.⇑

Rose, Dallas County’s medical examiner, walked into the corridor, which was full of scurrying medical staff, presidential aides, and secret service agents. He had a legal duty to fulfil. Years later he wrote, “A murder had been committed and . . . an accurate and thorough autopsy was critical for . . . the credibility of the investigation.”1