Earl Rose

Earl Forrest Rose (September 23, 1926 – May 1, 2012) was an American forensic pathologist, professor of medicine, and lecturer of law. Rose was the medical examiner for Dallas County, Texas, at the time of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy and he performed autopsies on J. D. Tippit, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby. After being shoved by Kennedy's aides, he stepped aside and allowed Kennedy's body to be removed from Parkland Memorial Hospital at gunpoint without performing an autopsy.

Early life Rose was born in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, on September 23, 1926, to Foresta cowboy and rodeo rider and Lena Berghuis Rose.

In the spring of 1944, at the end of his junior year, the 17-year-old Rose dropped out of high school and enlisted in the United States Navy where he served on a submarine, the USS Sea Devil, in the Pacific theater of World War II. For his role in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, he was disparaged by William Manchester in his 1967 book The Death of a President. According to a 2003 AP report, Rose's son, Forrest, believed that the book "depicted [Rose] as an unreasonable, petty state bureaucrat with a gripe." He found bullet entrance wounds on the officer's body: two on the right side of his chest, one in his right temple, and a superficial wound to his left rib. His examination found that Ruby's bullet entered Oswald's left side in the front part of the abdomen and caused damage to his spleen, stomach, aorta, vena cava, kidney, liver, diaphragm, and eleventh rib before coming to rest on his right side. Rose said he did not object to the exhumation. He was reported to have met Eddowes and to have had "great respect" for him. Rose began the autopsy on Ruby an hour after his death, and a report released the following month indicated that three doctors from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School assisted him in the post-mortem examination. The cause of death was determined to be a lung obstruction due to a massive blood clot. Rose indicated that the same type of cancer that affected Ruby's lungs was found in his brain, lymph nodes, liver, pancreas, pleura, ribs, and vertebra.

From 1968 until his retirement in early 1992, Rose taught pathology at the University of Iowa. In 1978, he served on the Forensic Pathology Panel of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations. During their retirement, Rose and his wife worked as small claims court mediators in Johnson County, Iowa.

Suffering from late-onset dementia and Parkinson's disease, Rose lost his long-term memory and the ability to converse over the last year of his life. He contracted a near-fatal case of pneumonia and was bed-ridden prior to his death. On May 1, 2012, Rose died at the Oaknoll Retirement Residence in Iowa City, Iowa from complications due to Parkinson's disease.

Views Rose rejected the idea that there was a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and he supported the Warren Commission's conclusion that a single gunman shot the President. The New York Times characterized him as "an outspoken opponent of capital punishment". According to The Des Moines Register, Rose described himself as a visitor' to the Mennonite faith".