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Humes died from lung cancer in a Florida hospital on May 6.
Humes was chief pathologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland when Kennedy's body was flown there for an autopsy after the November 22, 1963 assassination in Dallas. His conclusion that two shots hit the president enabled the Warren Commission to construct its one gunman scenario.
In March of 1964 Dr. Humes told the Commission that he burned a preliminary draft of his autopsy report on the President. However, in a certificate dated November 24, 1963, Humes stated that he burned "certain preliminary draft notes" and that he "transmitted all other paper related to this report to higher authority."
More recently, he told the Assassination Records Review Board, after what the Board called "persistent questioning," that he destroyed both his autopsy notes, and the first draft of his report.
Humes endorsed the Warren Commission's lone gunman findings to the end. "He always told people they could read the truth in the Warren Commission report, that there wasn't any hidden meaning and no hidden agenda and no government cover-up," said his daughter, Ann Sansbury.
But author Harrison Livingstone said that Humes "was being forced, during a coup and overthrow of the administration, to falsify data ... there was a big ambush down there."
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