When Trauma Room One was published in in November 2001, Dr. Crenshaw was relieved that many professional experts on the JFK assassination proved that his observations and commentary on the assassination were correct. He never wavered in his assertion and belief that Kennedy was shot at least once and probably twice from the front, not from the back as the Warren Commission declared. Dr. Crenshaw passed away the next week, on November 15, 2001.
He believed that his reputation as an outstanding surgeon and extremely honest individual had been brought into question by critics of his earlier book, and that the new book would provide answers to all questions. He had come under heavy criticism lead by The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and Editor George Lundberg in May of1992, shortly after his book JFK: Conspiracy of Silence was published in April of the same year.
To Dr. Crenshaw, it was unbelievable that such a visible national publication would question his observations, much less lead an all-out attack on his reputation. He had no idea that questioning the "official" government report on the JFK assassination would bring such vengeance. After all, he was only stating what many of the surgeons and doctors who attended President Kennedy on that fateful day had believed. On November 22, 1992, exactly 29 years since JFK had been shot, Crenshaw filed a lawsuit against JAMA for "slander with malice." In October 1994, he determined that he couldn't continue to fight JAMA and accepted a substantial monetary settlement. The litigation details and exposure of JAMA's unethical publication are included in Trauma Room One.
Throughout the last twenty years since Dr. Crenshaw's first book was published, his co-authors have contributed to several valuable commentaries on the JFK assassination. All have remained distinguished authors and supporters of their comments and perspectives as written in Trauma Room One.
An update to his first book, to be titled JFK Has Been Shot, will be published in September of 2013. It includes the original book and has twenty years of updates by his co-authors Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw.
