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{{Short description|Assassin of John F. Kennedy (1939–1963)}} | |||
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{{redirect|Kennedy's assassin|the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy|Sirhan Sirhan}} | |||
{{Infobox Biography | |||
{{pp|small=yes}} | |||
| subject_name = Lee Harvey Oswald | |||
{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2024}} | |||
| image_name = LHO14.jpg | |||
{{Infobox person | |||
| image_caption = Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas PD color mugshot, ], ] | |||
| name = Lee Harvey Oswald | |||
| date_of_birth = ], ] | |||
| image = Lee Harvey Oswald 1963.jpg | |||
| place_of_birth = ], ] | |||
| |
| caption = Oswald on November 23, 1963, one day after the assassination of Kennedy | ||
| birth_date = {{birth date|1939|10|18}} | |||
| place_of_death = ], ] | |||
| birth_place = ], U.S. | |||
| death_date = {{death date and age|1963|11|24|1939|10|18}} | |||
| death_place = ], ], U.S. | |||
| death_cause = Gunshot wound | |||
| resting_place = Rose Hill Cemetery, ], U.S. | |||
| known for = ] and murder of Dallas police officer ] | |||
| criminal_charge = ] (2 counts) | |||
| resting_place_coordinates = {{Coord|32.732455|-97.203223|display=inline|region:US-TX|name=Burial site of Lee Harvey Oswald}} | |||
| spouse = {{marriage|]|1961<!--YEAR OMITTED per Template:Marriage instructions-->}} | |||
| children = 2 | |||
| signature = Lee Harvey Oswald Signature.svg | |||
| module = {{Infobox military person | |||
| embed = yes | |||
| allegiance = United States | |||
| branch = ] | |||
| serviceyears = 1956–1959 | |||
| rank = ] (demoted to ]) | |||
}} | |||
}} | }} | ||
'''Lee Harvey Oswald''' (], ] – ], ]) was, according to four US government investigations, the ] of ] President ]. On ], ], Oswald was arrested on suspicion of killing President Kennedy and Dallas Texas policeman ] earlier that day. Oswald claimed that he was a "]" and "emphatically" denied the charges. Two days later, Oswald was shot to death by ] on live television while in police custody. Public opinion is still divided regarding the official version of Oswald's culpability, in the assassination.<ref name="abc">Gary Langer, (.pdf), ], November 16, 2003</ref> According to an ABC News poll, conducted in November 2003, 70 percent of American adults believe that the assassination was part of a larger plot. | |||
==Early life and Marine Corps service== | |||
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in ], ]. His father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, died before he was born and his mother, Marguerite Claverie, raised him along with ] older siblings, his brother Robert and his half-brother John Pic (Marguerite's child by her first marriage). His mother is said to have doted on him to excess, but despite this has been characterized as domineering and quarrelsome. They lived an itinerant lifestyle and before the age of 18 Oswald had lived in 22 different residences and attended 12 different schools, mostly around New Orleans and ]. Oswald's mother was of ] and ] descent and raised him in the ] faith. | |||
'''Lee Harvey Oswald''' (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a ] veteran who ],<!--Consensus is to use "assassinated". Please read the talkpage discussions and FAQ. --> the 35th ], on November 22, 1963. | |||
As a child Oswald was withdrawn and temperamental. After they moved in with John Pic (who had joined the ] and was stationed in ]), Oswald once threatened his sister-in-law with a knife and frequently punched his mother in the face.<ref> at ''The John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage''</ref> His truancy resulted in visits to ] Renatus Hartogs, who diagnosed the fourteen-year-old Oswald as having a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies."<ref> at ''Acorn.net''</ref> Oswald's behavior in school appeared to improve in his last months in New York.<ref> at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref><ref> at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> Some time in February, 1954, Marguerite Oswald decided to return to New Orleans with Lee. There was still an open question before a New York judge if he would be taken from the care of his mother to finish his schooling.<ref name="marguerite"> at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> In New Orleans, Oswald joined the school's marching band and then the ].<ref name="marguerite"/> | |||
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 for ], during which time he was assessed by a psychiatrist as "emotionally disturbed" due to a lack of normal family life. He attended 12 schools in his youth, quitting repeatedly, and at the age of 17 he joined the Marines, where he was ]ed twice and jailed. In 1959, he was discharged from active duty into the Marine Corps Reserve, then flew to Europe and defected to the ]. He lived in ], married a ] woman named ], and had a daughter. In June 1962, he returned to the United States with his wife, and eventually settled in Dallas, Texas, where their second daughter was born. | |||
Oswald never received a ] diploma before he enlisted in the US Marines. Throughout his life he had trouble with spelling and writing coherently. His letters, diary and other writings have led some to suggest he was ]<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> while others have contended his poor writing and spelling ] were the result of a sporadic education. Nonetheless he read voraciously and as a result sometimes asserted he was better educated than those around him. Around the age of fifteen, he became an ardent ], solely from reading about the topic. He wrote in his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries."<ref>, ], December 22, 2003</ref> | |||
Oswald shot and killed Kennedy on November 22, 1963, from a sixth-floor window of the ] as Kennedy traveled by motorcade through ] in ]. About 45 minutes after assassinating Kennedy, Oswald shot and killed Dallas police officer ] on a local street. He then slipped into ], where he was arrested for Tippit's murder. Oswald was charged with the assassination of Kennedy, but he denied responsibility for the killing, claiming that he was a "]" (a ]). Two days later, Oswald was fatally shot by local nightclub owner ] on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters. | |||
Although a ], Oswald wished to join the ]s. He idolized his older brother Robert and wore Robert's ] ring. This relationship seems to have transcended any ideological conflict for Oswald, and enlisting in the Marines may also have been a way to escape from his overbearing mother. He enlisted in the USMC in October 1956, a week after his 17th birthday. | |||
In September 1964, the ] concluded that Oswald had acted alone when assassinating Kennedy. This conclusion, though controversial, was supported by investigations from the ], the ] (FBI), the ], and the ] (HSCA).<ref group="n">These were investigations by: the ] (1963), the ] (1964), the ] (1979), the ], and the ].</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/JFKDP/|title=John F Kennedy, Dallas Police Department Collection – The Portal to Texas History|date=May 26, 2023|access-date=September 6, 2013|archive-date=October 9, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091009211856/http://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/JFKDP/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Tunheim1999">{{cite book|first=John R.|last=Tunheim|title=Final Report of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OibCmEpOqDwC&pg=PA1|date=March 1, 1999|publisher=DIANE Publishing|isbn=978-0-7881-7722-4|page=1}}</ref> Despite ], ], and eyewitness accounts supporting the official findings, public opinion polls have shown that most Americans still do not believe that the official version tells the whole truth of the events,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gallup.com/poll/1813/most-americans-believe-oswald-conspired-others-kill-jfk.aspx |title=Gallop: Most Americans Believe Oswald Conspired With Others to Kill JFK |date=April 11, 2001 |website=] |access-date=December 24, 2012 |archive-date=January 8, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090108161908/http://www.gallup.com/poll/1813/most-americans-believe-oswald-conspired-others-kill-jfk.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref> and the assassination spawned ]. | |||
Oswald was trained as a radar operator and assigned first to ] in ], ], then to ] in ]. Though Atsugi was a base for the ] spy planes that flew over the ] there is no evidence Oswald was involved in that operation. Oswald's experience in the Marine Corps was by all accounts unpleasant. Small and frail compared to the other Marines, he was nicknamed '']'' after a ]. His shyness and Soviet sympathies did not endear him to his fellow Marines. Ostracism only seemed to provoke him into being a more ardent and outspoken communist and ultimately his nickname became ''Oswaldskovich''. The Marine had subscribed to '']'' and taught himself rudimentary ]. Oswald was tried at a ] twice, first as a result of accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with a small, unauthorized handgun and later for starting a fight with a ] he thought responsible for the punishment he received. He was demoted from ] to ] and briefly served time in the ]. He was not punished for another incident when, while on sentry duty one night while stationed in the ], he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle. By the end of his Marine career Oswald was doing menial labor. | |||
== |
== Early life == | ||
Oswald was born at the old ] in ], on October 18, 1939, to a ] worker Robert Edward Lee Oswald Sr. (1896–1939) and a legal clerk ] (1907–1981).<ref>{{cite news|title=Blake Pontchartrain: Where was the French Hospital in New Orleans, and what's its story?|url=http://www.theadvocate.com/gambit/new_orleans/news/blake_pontchartrain/article_0f250090-8bc9-11e9-b664-4bfd08ff9783.html|newspaper=]|last=Pontchartrain|first=Blake|date=June 17, 2019|access-date=September 29, 2019|archive-date=September 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190928175410/https://www.theadvocate.com/gambit/new_orleans/news/blake_pontchartrain/article_0f250090-8bc9-11e9-b664-4bfd08ff9783.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Robert Oswald was a third cousin of President ] and a distant cousin of ] general ] and served as a ] in the ] during ].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Child |first=Christopher C. |date=March 14, 2022 |title=Roosevelts without middle names |url=https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2022/03/roosevelts-without-middle-names/ |access-date=May 25, 2022 |website=Vita Brevis |archive-date=May 25, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220525001339/https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2022/03/roosevelts-without-middle-names/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.luckybeantours.com/notable-tomb-tuesday-robert-e-lee-oswald-father-of-lee-harvey-oswald/|title=Notable Tomb Tuesday – Robert E. Lee Oswald, father of Lee Harvey Oswald|date=January 2, 2017|publisher=Lucky Bean Tours|access-date=September 22, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170922194124/https://www.luckybeantours.com/notable-tomb-tuesday-robert-e-lee-oswald-father-of-lee-harvey-oswald/|archive-date=September 22, 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref> Robert died of a heart attack two months before Lee was born.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 799, CE 1963, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165212/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0415b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> Lee's elder brother Robert Jr. (1934–2017)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/obituaries/article187524003.html|title=Robert Oswald, brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, dies at 83|date=December 1, 2017|publisher=Fort Worth Star Telegram|access-date=December 11, 2017|archive-date=December 12, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171212031547/http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/obituaries/article187524003.html|url-status=live}}</ref> was a U.S. Marine during the ].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vaughn |first=Beverly |date=November 30, 2017 |title=Obituaries Robert Edward Lee Oswald |url=https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/life/announcements/obituaries/2017/11/30/robert-edward-lee-oswald/108172714/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171204050327/https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/life/announcements/obituaries/2017/11/30/robert-edward-lee-oswald/108172714/ |archive-date=December 4, 2017 |access-date=July 18, 2024 |website=Times Record News}}</ref> Through Marguerite's first marriage to Edward John Pic Jr., Lee and Robert Jr. were the half-brothers of ] veteran John Edward Pic (1932–2000).<ref name="WCR-A13" /> | |||
In 1944, Marguerite moved the family from New Orleans to ]. Oswald entered the first grade in 1945 and over the next six years attended several different schools in the ] areas through the sixth grade. Oswald took an ] test in the fourth grade and scored 103, and "on achievement tests in , he twice did best in reading and twice did worst in spelling".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|pp=674–675}} | |||
] | |||
In October 1959 Oswald went to the ]. He was nineteen and the trip was well-planned in advance. Along with having taught himself rudimentary Russian he had saved his Marine Corps salary, got an early "hardship" discharge by (falsely) claiming he needed to care for his ailing mother in ] and submitted several fictional applications to foreign universities in order to obtain a student visa (and possibly help avoid Marine Corps ] duty). After spending one day with his mother in New Orleans he departed by ship for the Soviet Union, first arriving in France, then England and eventually ] as part of a package tour.<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> When he arrived in the ] and showed up unexpectedly at the US Embassy in Moscow he said he wanted to renounce his US ].<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> When the Navy Department learned of this it changed Oswald's Marine Corps discharge from "hardship/honorable" to "undesirable."<ref> (.pdf) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> Oswald's wish to remain in the USSR was initially applauded by the Soviets and described by at least one western journalist as a "defection," but although he had some technical knowledge acquired in the Marines they soon discovered he had little of real value to offer the Soviet Union and his application for Soviet residency was rejected.<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> In response, Oswald made a bloody but minor cut to his left wrist in his hotel room ]. After bandaging his superficial injury, the cautious Russians kept him under psychiatric observation at the Botkin Hospital.<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref><ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> Although this attempt may have been no more than an attention-getting ruse, the Soviet government feared an international incident if he attempted something similar again. Against the advice of the KGB, a high-level Presidium decision allowed Oswald to remain in the USSR. Although he had wanted to remain in Moscow and attend Moscow University, he was sent to ], west of Moscow in Byelorussia. The city had been rebuilt after World War II and was considered a model of Soviet urban prosperity. Moreover there were no foreign diplomatic missions or press corps in Minsk, where the young American malcontent could be kept away from foreigners and the US press and meanwhile be easily watched by the security services. | |||
As a child, Oswald was described as withdrawn and temperamental by several people who knew him.<ref name="WCR-C7">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=378 |chapter=Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives |chapter-url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964}} |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408112649/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report |url-status=live }}</ref> When Oswald was 12 in August 1952, his mother took him to New York City where they lived for a short time with Oswald's half-brother, John. Oswald and his mother were later asked to leave after an argument in which Oswald allegedly struck his mother and threatened John's wife with a pocket knife.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=676}}<ref>{{cite web |publisher=Warren Commission Hearings |url=http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol11/page38.php |title=Testimony of John Edward Pic |access-date=January 31, 2006 |archive-date=March 8, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060308104013/http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol11/page38.php |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 22, p. 687, CE 1382, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929111915/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/html/WH_Vol22_0359a.htm |date=September 29, 2007 }}.</ref> | |||
Oswald seemed to thrive at first. He was given a job as a metal lathe operator at the Gorizont (Horizon) Electronics Factory in Minsk, a huge facility which produced radios and televisions along with military and space electronic components. He was given a rent-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building under Gorizont's administration and in addition to his factory pay received monetary subsidies from the Red Cross (a Soviet organization entirely separate from the international medical aid organization). This represented an idyllic existence by Soviet-era working-class standards.<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> He was called ''Alek'' by his friends, who thought the name ''Lee'' sounded too ]. As a member of the Gorizont factory hunting club, Oswald was permitted to own a small .410 bore shotgun. He went bird hunting with Gorizont fellow-workers. (Oswald sold his shotgun to a Minsk pawnshop prior to his departure from the Soviet Union in 1962.) Oswald was a popular dinner guest in people's homes and a "man about town" frequently attending the opera, symphony concerts, the cinema and dating women he met at work, at ] dances and female students from the nearby Foreign Language School. | |||
Oswald attended seventh grade in ], but was often truant, which led to a psychiatric assessment at a juvenile reformatory.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=677}}<ref name=WarrenChapter7>{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#newyork|title=Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives|website=]|date=1964|access-date=August 26, 2020|archive-date=August 3, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803202940/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#newyork|url-status=live}}</ref> The reformatory psychiatrist, Dr. Renatus Hartogs, described Oswald as immersed in a "vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations". Hartogs concluded: | |||
Oswald was under constant surveillance by the ] during his thirty-month stay in Minsk. The local KGB office had never had its own American case and they threw themselves into the task, building the lengthy KGB file no. 31451, a mostly mundane account of Oswald's daily life.<ref> at ''Russian Books''</ref> The KGB assigned Oswald the codename ''Lehoy'', ironically meaning ''slick'' but also a phonetic play on ''Lee Harvey''. Oswald was spied upon by his close friend and fellow worker Pavel Golovachev, the son of Red Air Force General Golovachev, a senior air defense district commander in Siberia. Pavel Golovachev took many intimate photos of Oswald at home and at play in Minsk which no doubt were primarily intended for KGB consumption. He gave copies of some to Oswald and many later surfaced during the Warren investigation. In 1991 and 1992 interviews Golovachev said that at first he agreed to spy on Oswald, believing he might be a US intelligence officer. However, after getting to know him (and following KGB instructions to tempt Oswald with information from his father's air defense command, which didn't succeed) he concluded Oswald was who he said he was, an American who wanted to experience life in the Soviet Union and write a book about it (which Oswald began almost immediately when he got back to the United States). | |||
<blockquote>Lee has to be diagnosed as "personality pattern disturbance with ] features and ] tendencies". Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self involved and conflicted mother.<ref name="WarrenChapter7" /></blockquote> | |||
Hartogs recommended that Lee be placed on probation on condition that he seek help and guidance through a child guidance clinic, and that Oswald seek "psychotherapeutic guidance through contact with a family agency". Evelyn D. Siegel, a social worker who interviewed both Lee and ] at Youth House, while describing "a rather pleasant, appealing quality about this emotionally starved, affectionless youngster which grows as one speaks to him", found that he had detached himself from the world around him because "no one in it ever met any of his needs for love". Hartogs and Siegel indicated that Marguerite gave him very little affection, with Siegel concluding that Lee "just felt that his mother never gave a damn for him. He always felt like a burden that she simply just had to tolerate." Furthermore, his mother did not apparently indicate an awareness of the relationship between her conduct and her son's psychological problems, with Siegel describing Marguerite as a "defensive, rigid, self-involved person who had real difficulty in accepting and relating to people" and who had "little understanding" of Lee's behavior and of the "protective shell he has drawn around himself". Hartogs reported that she did not understand that Lee's withdrawal was a form of "violent but silent protest against his neglect by her and represents his reaction to a complete absence of any real family life".<ref name="WarrenChapter7" /> | |||
Golovachev said Oswald never talked about the dramatic circumstances of his arrival in Moscow, his suicide attempt or any desire to have Soviet citizenship. He gave the impression his arrival in the Soviet Union had not been contentious and did not speak badly about the USA, refraining from talk about politics in general. When asked by ordinary Russians if life was better in the USA or USSR, Golovachev recalled Oswald would reply that in his opinion there were pros and cons to both places and then try to steer the conversation elsewhere. Eventually, on a visit to Oswald's apartment in the spring of 1961 Golovachev warned him he was being reported upon by those close to him, including himself, a warning which was probably recorded by KGB microphones planted in the apartment. | |||
When Oswald returned to school for the 1953 Fall semester, his disciplinary problems continued. When he failed to cooperate with school authorities, they sought a court order to remove him from his mother's care so he could be placed into a home for boys to complete his education. This was postponed, perhaps partially because his behavior abruptly improved.<ref name="WarrenChapter7" /><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060512075446/http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/carro.htm |date=May 12, 2006 }}.</ref> Before the New York family court system could address their case,<ref name="WarrenChapter7" /><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060512075434/http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/2_12_64_AM.htm |date=May 12, 2006 }}.</ref> the Oswalds left New York in January 1954, and returned to New Orleans.<ref name="WarrenChapter7" />{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=679}} | |||
Meanwhile Oswald had tired of his relatively monotonous Soviet life. The Soviet Union's oppressive ] brought him to believe the country was a poorly implemented perversion of ] goals, while he believed himself to be a pure Marxist. Moreover Oswald had felt unappreciated when he was assigned factory work in Minsk instead of being admitted to study at the University of Moscow as he had requested. He gradually grew bored with the limited recreation available in Minsk and was stunned when co-worker Ella Germann refused his marriage proposal and then rejected him. In 1992 Germann said Oswald had talked about the two of them going to live in Czechoslovakia or even Yugoslavia, where he thought Communism was more liberal. He also told her that he was hiding in Minsk because the US had "hunted" him in Moscow and if he returned to the United States he would be "shot" (executed). In truth, while Oswald was saying these things to Ella he had made his first attempt to write the US embassy in Moscow about returning to the USA, although the KGB intercepted the letter and never forwarded it to the embassy. | |||
Oswald completed the eighth and ninth grades in New Orleans. He entered the tenth grade in 1955 but quit school after one month.<ref name="Saturday">{{cite journal |last=Bagdikian |first=Ben H. |author-link=Ben Bagdikian |editor1-first=Clay Jr. |editor1-last=Blair |editor1-link=Clay Blair |date=December 14, 1963 |title=The Assassin |journal=The Saturday Evening Post |issue=44 |page=23 |publisher=The Curtis Publishing Company |location=Philadelphia, Pennsylvania}}</ref> After leaving school, Oswald worked for several months as an office clerk and messenger in New Orleans. In July 1956, Oswald's mother moved the family to Fort Worth, Texas, and Oswald re-enrolled in the tenth grade for the September session at ] in Fort Worth. A few weeks later in October, Oswald quit school at age 17 to join the Marines;{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=681}} he never earned a high school diploma. By this point, he had resided at 22 locations and attended 12 schools.<ref group="n">The schools were: {{Citation needed|date=July 2010}}<!--was unclear from earlier text whether this all came from Warren Rpt or from other sources as well --> | |||
] | |||
* 1st grade: Benbrook Common School (Fort Worth, Texas), October 31, 1945 | |||
At a dance in early 1961 Oswald met Marina Alexandrovna (Nikolayevna by other sources) Prusakova, a troubled 19-year-old ] student from a broken family in Leningrad now living with her aunt and uncle in Minsk. While later reports described her uncle as a colonel in the KGB or MVD, he was a lumber industry expert in the MVD (Ministry of Interior) with a bureaucratic rank equivalent to colonel. The MVD at that time was analogous with the US departments of Justice and Interior combined and Marina's uncle administered lumbering projects using inmate labor, which by the time of ] consisted mostly of non-political criminal prisoners. Oswald and Marina married less than a month and a half after they met. Observers have remarked that Oswald was likely still on the rebound from his failed relationship with Ella while Marina may have married Oswald either for his high standard of living (the apartment and extra privileges) or to emigrate to the United States. "Maybe I was not in love with Alik as I ought to have been," she said much later (for example, after she was in the US but before the Kennedy assassination she wrote love letters to two ex-boyfriends). | |||
* 1st grade (again): Covington Elementary School (]), September 1946 – January 1947 | |||
* 1st grade (end): Clayton Public School (Ft Worth, TX), January–May 1947 | |||
* 2nd grade: Clayton Public School (Ft Worth, TX), September 1947 | |||
* 2nd grade (end): ] (Ft Worth, TX), March 1948 | |||
* 3rd grade: Arlington Heights Elementary School (Ft Worth, TX), September 1948 | |||
* 4th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (since renamed Luella Merrett, Ft Worth), Sep. 1949 | |||
* 5th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (Ft Worth), September 1950 | |||
* 6th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (Ft Worth), September 1951 | |||
* 7th grade: Trinity Evangelical Lutheran School (Bronx, NYC, NY), August 1952 | |||
* 7th grade: ] (Bronx, NY), September 1952 (attended 17 of 64 days) | |||
* 7th grade (end): ] (Bronx, NY), March 23, 1953 | |||
:: ]: Youth House (NYC, NY), April–May 1953. | |||
* 8th grade: Public School 44 (Bronx, NY), September 14, 1953 | |||
* 8th grade (end): Beauregard Junior High School (New Orleans), January 13, 1954 | |||
* 9th grade: Beauregard Junior High School (New Orleans), September 1954 – June 1955 | |||
* 10th grade: ] (New Orleans), September–October 1955 (Warren appendix 13) | |||
:: (tried to enlist in U.S. Marines using affidavit claiming age 17) | |||
:: (worked as clerk/messenger in New Orleans, rather than school) | |||
* 10th grade (again): ] (Ft Worth, TX), September–October 1956. Final withdrawal from high school, 10th grade. (Warren appendix 13)</ref> | |||
Though Oswald had trouble spelling in his youth{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|pp=674–675}} and may have had a "]",{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|p=383}} he read voraciously. By age 15, he considered himself a ]. According to his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries." At 16, he wrote to the ] for information on their ], saying he had been studying socialist principles for "well over fifteen months".<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080930215842/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm |date=September 30, 2008 }}.</ref> Edward Voebel, "whom the Warren Commission had established was Oswald's closest friend during his teenage years in New Orleans", said "reports that Oswald was already 'studying ]' were a 'lot of baloney.{{'"}} Voebel said that "Oswald commonly read '] trash{{'"}}.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411132948/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol9/pdf/HSCA_Vol9_4_Oswald.pdf |date=April 11, 2008 }}, ], vol. 9, 4, p. 107.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602193934/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh8/html/WC_Vol8_0009b.htm |date=June 2, 2013 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 8, pp. 10, 12.</ref> | |||
Marina soon became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter June. Oswald had never formally renounced his US citizenship (the US Embassy in Moscow had retained his US passport) and began seeking permission for the three of them to go to the United States. | |||
As a teenager in 1955, Oswald became a cadet member of ] in New Orleans. Fellow cadets variously recalled him attending CAP meetings "three or four" times, or "10 or 12 times", over a one- to three-month period.<ref name="aarclibrary107"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165358/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol9/html/HSCA_Vol9_0058a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, House Select Committee on Assassinations – Appendix to Hearings, Volume 9, 4, pp. 107–115.</ref><ref name="autogenerated1993"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930012241/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/glimpse/ferrie.html |date=September 30, 2007 }}, broadcast on PBS stations, November 1993 (various dates).</ref> | |||
Most Russian witnesses to Oswald's time in the USSR (first interviewed in 1991 and 1992 by Peter Vronsky<ref> (main menu) at ''Russian Books''</ref>) recalled Oswald as a boyish, silly and immature youth: He was nineteen when he arrived in the USSR, twenty-two when he left. He was described by some as shallow, with limited intelligence, a poor and lazy worker but almost all remembered him as "sympathetic" (charming and friendly). He did not drink or smoke, which the Russians found strange. His only vice seemed to be sweets and pastries, about which his girlfriends later said he was annoyingly parsimonious. Most Russians who knew him recall that once the thrill of meeting an American wore off, Oswald was rather dull company with little of interest to say. A shelf in his apartment was filled with books on Marxism but his understanding of it seemed rudimentary. Neighbors who lived directly above him, with windows looking onto his balcony below, were critical in their 1991-92 recollections, describing him as a rude lout who was frequently heard berating Marina for her apparent lack of cooking and cleaning skills, saying Marina complained to them that Oswald had struck her on occasion. | |||
== Marine Corps == | |||
Oswald's Russian language proficiency was described by all the Russian witnesses as borderline coherent, but Russians in general are highly critical when characterizing linguistic abilities. Russians who encountered Oswald when he first arrived in Moscow unanimously recalled that his Russian was incoherent beyond basic phrases such as, "I need a fork." Russians who knew him through the duration of his stay in Minsk from January 1960 to June 1962 said that although Oswald's spoken Russian improved over time, his comprehension did not. Pavel Golovachev remembered how Marina would occasionally bluntly berate and belittle Lee to other Russians while he was in the room without him catching on. Letters written in Russian by Oswald (reproduced among Warren Commission exhibits which include CE 1, the letter he wrote to Marina the day he is believed to have attempted the assassination of General Walker<ref name="walker note"> (.jpg) at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref>) are all poorly written and ungrammatical. Declassified CIA documents relating to phone calls made by Oswald in Mexico City shortly before the assassination characterize his Russian as still barely coherent and broken, "a language he could not manage."<ref> (page 20) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> | |||
] | |||
Oswald enlisted in the ] on October 24, 1956, just a week after his seventeenth birthday; because of his age, his brother Robert Jr. was required to sign as his ]. Oswald also named his mother and his half-brother John as beneficiaries.<ref name="bob">{{cite web|url=http://www.modbee.com/2013/11/25/3052132/bob-ray-sanders-a-monday-of-funerals.html|title=A Monday of Funerals, and Learning a Bit More about the Man Who Killed Kennedy|first=Bob Ray|last=Sanders|date=November 25, 2013|access-date=November 25, 2013|work=] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131202230704/http://www.modbee.com/2013/11/25/3052132/bob-ray-sanders-a-monday-of-funerals.html|archive-date=December 2, 2013}}</ref> Oswald idolized his older brother Robert Jr.,<ref name="Marina and Lee; 2013">{{cite book |last=Johnson McMillan |first=Priscilla |date=2013 |title=Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald's Assassination of John F. Kennedy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Af0lAAAAQBAJ |chapter=Interlude |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Af0lAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA66 |location=Hanover, New Hampshire |publisher=Steerforth Press |page=66 |isbn=978-1-58642-217-2}}</ref> and wore his Marine Corps ring.<ref name="WCR-HVI">{{cite book |title=Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Volume I |url=https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=37#relPageId=1&tab=page |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=227 |chapter=Testimony of Mrs. Marguerite Oswald |chapter-url=https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=37#relPageId=239&tab=page |ref={{harvid|Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Volume I|1964}} |access-date=September 1, 2017 |archive-date=September 1, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170901110246/https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=37#relPageId=1&tab=page |url-status=live }}</ref> John Pic (Oswald's half-brother) testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald's enlistment was motivated by wanting "to get from out and under ... the yoke of oppression from my mother".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|p=384}} | |||
In December 1961, approximately six months before Oswald left the Soviet Union, the KGB reported that Oswald manufactured a pipe bomb using parts he took home from the factory's metal shop and (presumably) filled with gunpowder from ammunition for his shotgun. (This episode is confirmed by Oswald's former friend, medical student Eric Titovetz, in a 1991 interview, (prior to the release of the KGB documents) in which he claimed to have been shown the bomb by Oswald. Titovetz stated in the interview that Oswald never explained to him why he had made the bomb nor what subsequently happened to it. Titovetz attributed the making of the bomb to just another of Oswald's "boyish pranks.") The KGB at the time became concerned when an assassination attempt was made on the life of Soviet Premier Khrushchev several weeks later on a visit to a Minsk area resort. (The details of the Khrushchev 1962 assassination attempt are still classified.) Oswald discarded the pipe bomb into the trash where the KGB recovered it. There has been speculation that Oswald, knowing he was under KGB observation, made the bomb to hasten the Soviets into issuing him an exit visa and indeed on December 25, 1961, within weeks of the incident, exit visas for both Lee and Marina were approved (the pipe bomb may have been a ploy similar to his earlier suicide attempt, this time with an opposite goal). The Oswalds' departure, however, was delayed by a further six months because US authorities were now reluctant to approve Marina's entry into the US. | |||
Oswald's enlistment papers recite that he was {{convert|5|ft|8|in|m|abbr=off|sp=us}} tall and weighed {{convert|135|lb}}, with hazel eyes and brown hair.<ref name="bob" /> His primary training was in radar operation, which required a ]. A May 1957 document stated that he was "granted final clearance to handle classified matter up to and including ] after careful check of local records had disclosed no derogatory data".<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 19, Folsom Exhibit No. 1, p. 665, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602224031/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0342a.htm |date=June 2, 2013 }}.</ref> | |||
After nearly a year of paperwork and waiting, on ], ] the young family left the ] for the United States. Having started his teens as a lonely troubled truant in New York, Lee Oswald had been brought back by his mother to New Orleans, where he developed numerous friendships and acquaintances during his high school years. He did likewise in the Marines but led his most active social life in the Soviet Union where he had a number of girlfriends, married, fathered a child, formed social bonds, went on picnics and hunting trips, to parties, to dinners in people's homes, dances and moved among a broad range of people. However, after returning to the United States in 1962 Oswald would have few friends or acquaintances other than ]. He became disillusioned and isolated even from his own family, seeing them together for the last time in November 1962 on Thanksgiving Day. He eventually separated from his wife Marina and their infant daughter, living alone in distant rooming houses. There are periods in the final months of his life during which his movements and activities have remained undocumented. Some observers have remarked that during the last year of his life Oswald appeared to change physically, rapidly balding and appearing to age significantly beyond his twenty-four years. | |||
At ] in Mississippi, Oswald finished seventh in a class of thirty in the Aircraft Control and Warning Operator Course, which "included instruction in aircraft surveillance and the use of radar".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|pp=682–683}} He was given the ] of Aviation Electronics Operator.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-13.html#marines |title=Appendix 13 |publisher=Archives.gov |access-date=May 23, 2016 |archive-date=May 19, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160519100501/http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-13.html#marines |url-status=live }}</ref> On July 9, he reported to the ] in California. There he met fellow Marine ], who co-created ]. Thornley wrote the 1962 fictional book ''The Idle Warriors'' based on Oswald. This was the only book written about Oswald before the Kennedy assassination.<ref name="KerryThornley.com_jfk">{{cite web|url=http://www.kerrythornley.com/jfk/|title=JFK|publisher=KerryThornley.com|access-date=April 11, 2022|archive-date=March 8, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308042825/http://www.kerrythornley.com/jfk/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/T%20Disk/Thornley%20Kerry%20Wendell%20--%20Lifton%20David/Item%2006.pdf |title=Garrison vs. Thornley: Part II | author=Lifton, David |publisher=Hood College, The Harold Weisberg Archive |access-date=April 11, 2022}}</ref><ref name="Kerry_Thornley_National_Archives_11-25-1963">{{cite book |url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7461215 |title=Thornley, Kerry Wendell |series=Series: Records Relating to Key Persons, November 30, 1963 – September 24, 1964 |date=November 30, 1963 |publisher=National Archives Catalog, Records of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Collection: Key Persons Files |access-date=April 13, 2022 |archive-date=April 13, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220413210215/https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7461215 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Oswald departed for Japan the following month, where he was assigned to ] at ] near Tokyo.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=683}}<ref name="Kerry_Thornley_National_Archives">{{cite book |url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7461215 |title=Thornley, Kerry Wendell |series=Series: Records Relating to Key Persons, November 30, 1963 – September 24, 1964 |date=November 30, 1963 |publisher=National Archives Catalog |access-date=April 13, 2022 |archive-date=April 13, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220413210215/https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7461215 |url-status=dead }}</ref> | |||
After the assassination of President Kennedy, many Russians who knew Oswald, stated in 1991-1992 interviews that they were never contacted by the KGB or interviewed by any authorities. Ella Germann, for example, who was Oswald's lover prior to Marina and to whom Oswald proposed marriage in 1960, insists that authorities never came to question her about Oswald. Many of Oswald's former friends in 1991 still had artifacts from Oswald's days in Minsk: letters, photographs, books, and gifts that he had given them. The exception to this, was Pavel Golovachev, ironically a KGB informant from almost the day of Oswald's arrival in Minsk. Golovachev was an avid photographer with his own darkroom and is responsible for many of the known photographs of Oswald and Marina in the Soviet Union. According to Golovachev, after the assassination he sent a letter of condolence to Marina in the USA (he had kept up correspondence with Lee and Marina after their departure.) The letter was intercepted and the KGB confiscated all the letters, books, magazines, and photographs of and from Oswald in Golovachev's possession. Golovachev was detained at the KGB Minsk headquarters and interrogated. He was released after being warned not to contact Marina again or to discuss his relationship with Oswald with anyone. In 1991-1992 interviews Golovachev recalls that what the KGB wanted to know most during the interrogation was whether he had sexual relations with Marina. | |||
Like all Marines, Oswald was trained and tested in shooting. In December 1956, he scored 212, which was slightly above the requirements for the designation of ].<ref name="Saturday" /> In May 1959, he scored 191, which reduced his rating to ].<ref name="Saturday" /><ref name="WCR-C4">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=191 |chapter=Chapter 4: The Assassin |chapter-url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964}} |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408112649/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report |url-status=live }}</ref> Oswald was ] after he ] himself in the elbow with an unauthorized ] handgun. He was court-martialed a second time for fighting with the sergeant he thought was responsible for his punishment in the shooting matter. He was demoted from ] to ] and briefly imprisoned. Oswald was later punished for a third incident: while he was on a night-time sentry duty in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.<ref>], ''Case Closed'', Random House, New York, 1993 p. 28</ref> | |||
==Dallas== | |||
Back in the United States, the Oswalds settled in the ] area and Lee attempted to write his ] and commentary on Soviet life, a small manuscript called ''The Collective''. He soon gave up the idea but his search for literary feedback put him in touch with the area's close-knit community of anti-Communist Russian émigrés. While merely tolerating the belligerent and arrogant Lee Oswald, they sympathized with Marina, partly because she was in a foreign country with no knowledge of ] (which her husband refused to teach her) and because Oswald had begun to beat her. Although they eventually abandoned Marina when she made no sign of leaving him, Oswald had found an unlikely best friend in the well-educated and worldly ] ] ], who liked playing the provocateur and enjoyed putting people off with his disagreeable and sullen ] friend. Marina meanwhile befriended a married couple, ] ] and her husband Michael. | |||
Slightly built, Oswald was nicknamed '']'' after the cartoon character; due to his pro-] sentiments, he was also called ''Oswaldskovich''.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh8/pdf/WH8_Botelho_aff.pdf |title=Affidavit of James Botelho |access-date=March 3, 2013 |archive-date=September 21, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921054019/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh8/pdf/WH8_Botelho_aff.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> In November 1958, Oswald transferred back to El Toro<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tYi9AAAAQBAJ&pg=PT46 |title=Oswald's Game |publisher=W W Norton & Co Inc |date=2013 |access-date=September 20, 2013 |isbn=978-1-4804-0287-4 }}</ref> where his unit's function "was to serveil {{sic}} for aircraft, but basically to train both enlisted men and officers for later assignment overseas". An officer there said that Oswald was a "very competent" crew chief and was "brighter than most people".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602203509/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh8/html/WC_Vol8_0149b.htm |date=June 2, 2013 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 8, pp. 290–298.</ref><ref>Summers 1998, p. 94.</ref> | |||
In Dallas Oswald got a job with the Leslie Welding Company but disliked the work and quit after three months. He then found a position at the ]s firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. The company has been cited as doing classified work for the US government but this was limited to ] for maps and produced in a section Oswald had no access to. He did use photographic and typesetting equipment in the unsecured area to create falsified identification documents,<ref> (page 288) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> including some in the name of an ] he created, ''Alek James Hidell''. His co-workers and supervisors eventually grew frustrated with his inefficiency, lack of precision, inattention, and rudeness to others (to the point where fist-fights had threatened to break out). After six months his supervisor finally terminated Oswald´s employment there after seeing him reading a Russian satiric magazine (''Krokodil'' or Crocodile, named for its bite) in the cafeteria. | |||
While Oswald was in the Marines, he taught himself rudimentary Russian. Although this was an unusual endeavor, on February 25, 1959, he was invited to take a Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken Russian. His level at the time was rated "poor" in understanding spoken Russian, though he fared rather reasonably for a Marine private at the time in reading and writing.<ref>Summers 2013, pp. 140–141. The grades were −5 in understanding, +4 in reading and +3 in writing.</ref> On September 11, 1959, he received a ] from active service, claiming his mother needed care. He was placed on the ].<ref name="Saturday" /><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 19, Folsom Exhibit No. 1, p. 85, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080930215754/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0373b.htm |date=September 30, 2008 }}.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0376b.htm |title=Warren Commission Hearings, Folsom Exhibit No. 1 (cont'd) |volume=XIX Folsom |page=734 |journal=Warren Commission Hearings|access-date=June 5, 2011 |archive-date=January 11, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165345/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0376b.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
==Attempted assassination of General Walker== | |||
] | |||
General ] was an outspoken ], ]ist and member of the ] who had been commanding officer of the Army's 24th Infantry Division based in West Germany under ] supreme command until he was relieved of his command in 1961 by JFK for distributing ] literature to his troops. Walker resigned from the service and returned to his native ]. He ran in the six-person ] gubernatorial primary in 1962 but lost to ], who went on to win the race. In February, 1963 the general was making front-page news with an ] partner in an anti-Communist tour called ''Operation Midnight Ride''. | |||
== Defection to the Soviet Union == | |||
Oswald put Walker under ], taking pictures of the general's home and nearby railroad tracks, photos later matched to the same camera Marina later used to take the famous backyard poses). Oswald mail-ordered a rifle (see below) using his alias Alek Hidell, having already mail-ordered a revolver in January. He planned the assassination for ], ten days after he was fired from Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. He chose a Wednesday evening since the neighborhood would be relatively crowded because of services in a church adjacent to Walker's home; he would not stand out and could mingle with the crowds if necessary to make his escape. He left a note in Russian for Marina with instructions for her to follow should he be caught.<ref name="walker note"/> Walker was sitting at a desk in his dining room when Oswald fired at him from less than a hundred feet (30 m) away. Walker survived only because the bullet struck the wooden frame of the window, which deflected its path, but was injured in the forearm by bullet fragments. | |||
Oswald traveled to the ] just before he turned 20 in October 1959. He had taught himself Russian and saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary ({{Inflation|US|1500|1969|r=-2|fmt=eq}}).<ref group="n">Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 22, p. 705, CE 1385, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230112153025/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/html/WH_Vol22_0366a.htm |date=January 12, 2023 }} conducted by ] in Moscow in November 1959. Oswald: "When I was working in the middle of the night on guard duty, I would think how long it would be and how much money I would have to save. It would be like being out of prison. I saved about $1500." During Oswald's two years and ten months of service in the Marine Corps he received $3,452.20, after all taxes, allotments and other deductions as well as his GED. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 26, p. 709, CE 3099, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071019230848/http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh26/html/WH_Vol26_0241b.htm |date=October 19, 2007 }}.</ref> Oswald spent two days with his mother in ], then embarked by ship on September 20 from New Orleans to ], France, and immediately traveled to the United Kingdom. Arriving in ] on October 9, he told officials he had $700 and planned to stay for one week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. On the same day, he flew to ], where he checked in at the ], room 309, then moved to Hotel Klaus Kurki, room 429.<ref>Leskinen, M. & J. Keronen. ''Secret Helsinki''. Jonglez Publishing, 2019. {{ISBN|978-2-36195-170-2}}</ref> He was issued a Soviet ] on October 14. Oswald left Helsinki by train on the following day, crossed the Soviet border at ], and arrived in Moscow on October 16.<ref>Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120210050434/http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/journey.htm |date=February 10, 2012 }} at ''Russian Books''</ref> His visa, valid only for a week, was due to expire on October 21.<ref name="historicdiaryp94" /> During his stay in the Soviet Union his mail was intercepted and read by the CIA, with ] being charged with this assignment.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Kampeas |first1=Ron |title=New JFK documents reveal assassin's CIA monitor was Jewish spy Reuben Efron |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-jfk-documents-reveal-assassins-cia-monitor-was-jewish-spy-reuben-efron/ |work=] |date=August 2, 2023}}</ref> | |||
The Dallas police had no suspects in the Walker shooting. Oswald's involvement was not suspected until a note and some of the photos were found by following the assassination of JFK, after which Marina Oswald told authorities about Oswald's attempt on Walker's life. The bullet was too badly damaged to run conclusive ballistics studies, though ] tests later proved the bullet was from the cartridge manufacturer, and probably the same lot of bullets, as the two which later struck Kennedy. | |||
Almost immediately after arriving, Oswald informed his ] guide of his desire to become a Soviet citizen. When asked why by the various Soviet officials he encountered{{snd}}all of whom, by Oswald's account, found his wish incomprehensible{{snd}}he said that he was a communist, and gave what he described in his diary as "vauge{{sic}} answers about 'Great Soviet Union'".<ref name=historicdiaryp94>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 16, p. 94, CE 24, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111164735/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0059b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, entries of October 16, 1959, to October 21, 1959.</ref> On October 21, the day his visa was due to expire, he was told that his citizenship application had been refused, and that he had to leave the Soviet Union that evening. Distraught, Oswald inflicted a minor but bloody wound to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub soon before his Intourist guide was due to arrive to escort him from the country, according to his diary because he wished to kill himself in a way that would shock her.<ref name="historicdiaryp94" /> Delaying Oswald's departure because of his self-inflicted injury, the Soviets kept him in a Moscow hospital under psychiatric observation for a week, until October 28, 1959.<ref name=historicdiaryp95>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 16, p. 95, CE 24, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230525143235/https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0060a.htm |date=May 25, 2023 }}, entries of October 21, 1959, to October 28, 1959.</ref> | |||
==New Orleans== | |||
By now Oswald was unemployed, had failed to kill General Walker, and his best friend de Mohrenschildt had moved away from Dallas. While Marina (who was pregnant for the second time) stayed with the Paines, he returned to the city of his birth, New Orleans, arriving on the morning of ] looking for work. Marina was driven there by family friend Ruth Paine after Oswald got a job with the Reilly Coffee Company in May, but he was fired for dereliction in July. | |||
] | |||
Although Oswald had Marina write to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. about the possibility of returning to the ], he was still disillusioned with the USSR. His Marxist hopes had become pinned on ] and ] and he soon became a vocal pro-Castro advocate. The ] was a national organization and Oswald set out on his own initiative as a one-member New Orleans chapter, spending $22.73 on 1000 flyers, 500 membership applications and 300 membership cards. He asked Marina to sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on one card. | |||
According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials that day, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States. Oswald replied by insisting that he wanted to live in the Soviet Union as a Soviet national. When pressed for identification papers, he provided his Marine Corps discharge papers.<ref name=historicdiaryp97>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 16, p. 96, CE 24, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404101308/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0060b.htm |date=April 4, 2023 }}, entries of October 28, 1959, to October 31, 1959.</ref> | |||
On October 31, Oswald appeared at the ] and declared a desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship.<ref>Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120209050034/http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/moscow1.htm |date=February 9, 2012 }} at ''Russian Books''</ref><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 18, p. 108, CE 912, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111130639/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0061b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> He said: "I have made up my mind. I'm through."<ref name=miaminews1959>{{dead link|date=February 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, ''The Miami News'', October 31, 1959, p. 1</ref> He told the U.S. embassy interviewing officer, ], that "he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he had voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen he would make known to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest."<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080528203358/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/pdf/WH18_CE_908.pdf |date=May 28, 2008 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 18, p. 98, CE 908</ref> Such statements led to Oswald's ''hardship/honorable'' military reserve discharge being changed to '']''.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, CE 780, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404101313/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/WH17_CE_780.pdf |date=April 4, 2023 }}.</ref> The story of the defection of a former U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported by both the ] and ].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74970546/the-sacramento-bee/|title=Former Marine Applies For Russ Citizenship|newspaper=The Sacramento (CA) Bee|date=October 31, 1959|page=27|access-date=April 2, 2021|archive-date=October 23, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211023210658/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74970546/the-sacramento-bee/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74970684/the-times/|title=Texan Asks Soviet Citizenship|newspaper=The Times (Shreveport, LA)|date=November 1, 1959|page=22|access-date=April 2, 2021|archive-date=April 4, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404101248/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/74970684/the-times/|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
Most of Oswald's activities consisted of passing out flyers to passersby on the street. He made a clumsy attempt to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups and briefly met with a skeptical ], New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro Cuban Student Directorate. Several days later Bringuier and two friends confronted a man passing out pro-Castro handbills and realized it was Oswald. During an ensuing scuffle all of them were arrested and Oswald spent the night in jail. The trial got news media attention and Oswald was interviewed afterwards. He was also privately filmed passing out fliers in front of the International Trade Mart with two "volunteers" he had hired for $2 at the unemployment office. Oswald's political work in New Orleans came to an end after a WDSU radio debate between Bringuier and Oswald arranged by journalist Bill Stuckey. Instead of discussing Cuba as he had successfully done during a previous radio program, Oswald was publicly confronted with the lies and omissions he had made concerning his life and background and became audibly upset. Within a month he left New Orleans and returned to Dallas. | |||
Though Oswald had wanted to attend ], in January 1960 he was sent to ], Belarus, to work as a ] operator at the Gorizont Electronics Factory, which produced radios, televisions, and military and space electronics.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=697}}<!-- this reference supports the material that he was sent to Minsk in January 1960 to work as a lathe operator at a radio/television factory --> ], who later became independent Belarus's first head of state, also worked at Gorizont at the time, and was assigned to help Oswald improve his Russian.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nv-online.info/by/251/printed/41936/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2-%D0%A8%D0%A3%D0%A8%D0%9A%D0%95%D0%92%D0%98%D0%A7-%D0%9D%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE.htm |title=Stanislau Shushkevich, biographical sketch (in Russian) |publisher=Nv-online.info |access-date=March 24, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316050840/http://www.nv-online.info/by/251/printed/41936/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2-%D0%A8%D0%A3%D0%A8%D0%9A%D0%95%D0%92%D0%98%D0%A7-%D0%9D%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE.htm |archive-date=March 16, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Oswald received a government-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay, which allowed him to have a comfortable standard of living by working-class Soviet standards,<ref>Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120203010713/http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/minsk3.htm |date=February 3, 2012 }} at ''Russian Books''</ref> though he was kept under constant ].<ref>Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111230151020/http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/minsk2.htm |date=December 30, 2011 }} at ''Russian Books''</ref> | |||
Oswald's four months in New Orleans were carefully scrutinized after the JFK assassination, most notably by New Orleans district attorney ] in his unsuccessful attempt to link Oswald to wealthy local businessman ], a former president of the International Trade Mart. Garrison's attempt to establish connections between the two included ] (a retired FBI agent and former New Orleans police chief turned private investigator) and ] (a pilot and amateur ] researcher who wore an ill-fitting red wig and false eyebrows, probably because his rare illness made him hairless). Although Ferrie and Oswald were simultaneously members of the ] in New Orleans during the 1950s and both appear in a CAP group photo,<ref>, ], November 20, 2003</ref> there is no credible evidence they had any significant contact when Oswald was a teenager, or knew each other a decade later in 1963. Banister had an office in the building at 531 Lafayette and Oswald stamped a few (but not all) of his flyers with the address 544 Camp Street. These addresses share the same structure, a building which was a block away from Oswald's job at the Reilly Coffee Company, but represent different entrances into it. There is also no credible evidence that Oswald knew Banister or rented an office in the building, and many historians have noted that Oswald's letters, applications and other written statements were consistently made up of lies. 544 Camp Street was also home to the anti-Castro Cuban Revolutionary Council and some researchers have suggested Oswald used the address to embarrass them.<ref>Dave Reitzes, at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> Either way, his work involving the Fair Play for Cuba Committee may have been little more than an effort to impress the Cuban government as a prelude to defecting there.<ref> (page 96) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> | |||
{{anchor|Ella German}} | |||
==Mexico== | |||
From mid-1960 to early 1961, Oswald was in a relationship with Ella German ({{langx|be|Эла Герман}}), a Belarusian coworker born in 1937.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13| 1964| pp=697, 699}}<ref name="WCR-A13">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=697, 699 |chapter=Appendix 13: Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald |chapter-url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-13.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964}} |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408112649/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Tablet">{{cite news |last=Savodnik |first=Peter |date=October 11, 2013 |title=Could a Jewish Beauty Have Saved Kennedy by Marrying Lee Harvey Oswald in Minsk? |url=http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/148551/lee-harvey-oswald-in-minsk?all=1 |newspaper=Tablet |access-date=June 8, 2014 |archive-date=July 14, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714233756/http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/148551/lee-harvey-oswald-in-minsk?all=1 |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
While Ruth Paine drove Marina back to Dallas, Oswald lingered in New Orleans for two more days waiting to collect a $33 unemployment check. He boarded a bus for ] but instead of heading north to Dallas he took a bus southwest towards ] and the ]. Once in Mexico he hoped to continue on to Cuba, a plan he openly shared with other passengers on the bus. Arriving in ], he completed a transit visa application at the Cuban Embassy,<ref> (.jpg) at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> claiming he wanted to visit the country on his way back to the ]. The Cubans insisted the Soviet Union needed to approve his journey to the USSR before he could get a Cuban visa and he was unable to get speedy cooperation from the Soviet embassy. After shuttling back and forth between consulates for five days, getting into a heated argument with the Cuban consul, making impassioned pleas to KGB agents and coming under at least some ] surveillance as a result, Oswald returned to Dallas. It was during this period that he talked to Marina about hijacking an airliner to Cuba. He had even told her he would one day be the premier of Cuba and she teased him about it.<ref> (page 94) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> However, less than three weeks later, on October 18 the Cuban embassy in Mexico City finally approved the visa and 11 days before the assassination Oswald wrote in a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington DC, "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business."<ref>, ], November 20, 2003</ref><ref> (page 19) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> | |||
They ate together in the factory cafeteria every day and dated about twice each week.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=108}} German later described Oswald as "a pleasant-looking guy with a good sense of humor{{nbsp}}...<!--. He was--> not as rough and rude as the men here were back then";<ref name="Gallagher">{{cite news |last=Gallagher |first=James P. |date=January 27, 1993 |title=Literati Probing Oswald's Days In Minsk |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1993/01/27/literati-probing-oswalds-days-in-minsk/ |newspaper=Chicago Tribune |access-date=June 8, 2014 |archive-date=July 14, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714222320/http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-01-27/news/9303172633_1_lee-harvey-oswald-dallas-city-jail-drab-city |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
she did not love him, but thought he was lonely and continued to date him out of pity.{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=109}} Their relationship became more serious{{snd}}in Oswald's eyes{{snd}}during the summer and fall of 1960,<ref name="Tablet" /> | |||
but began to deteriorate after German learned in October that Oswald had been seeing other women.<ref name="Tablet" /> On January 2, 1961, Oswald proposed, but German refused.<ref name="Tablet" />{{sfn|Mailer|2007|p=130}} | |||
== Return to the U.S. == | |||
==The rifle and Oswald's marksmanship== | |||
{{main|John F. Kennedy assassination rifle}} | |||
] | |||
], a ], '']'' and '']'' newspapers, was one of three taken on ], ].]] | |||
Oswald wrote in his diary in January 1961: "I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|p=394}} Shortly afterwards, Oswald (who had never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship) wrote to the ], requesting the return of his American passport, and proposing to return to the U.S. if any charges against him would be dropped.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 18, p. 131, CE 931, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165458/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0073a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> | |||
In March 1963, Oswald used his ] alias "A. Hidell" to purchase the ] later linked to the ], ] assassination of John F. Kennedy. The surplus Italian military rifle was purchased from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, with a coupon taken from an ad in the February issue of '']''. FBI and Treasury Department experts later matched the handwriting on the coupon and the envelope, to Oswald. The rifle was purchased under "A. Hidell" but sent to a Dallas post office box rented by Oswald under his own name. | |||
In March 1961, Oswald met ] (born 1941), a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married six weeks later.<ref group="n">Though later reports described her uncle, with whom she was living, as a colonel in the ], he was a lumber industry expert in the ] (MVD) with a bureaucratic rank of ''Polkovnik''. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, ''Marina and Lee'', Harper & Row, 1977, pp. 64–65. {{ISBN|978-0-06-012953-8}}.</ref><ref>], Hearings, vol. 2 p. 207, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165352/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol2/html/HSCA_Vol2_0106a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, September 13, 1978.</ref> The Oswalds' first child, June, was born on February 15, 1962. On May 24, 1962, Oswald and Marina applied at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for documents that enabled her to immigrate to the U.S. On June 1, the U.S. Embassy gave Oswald a repatriation loan of $435.71.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=712}} Oswald, Marina, and their infant daughter left for the United States, where they received less attention from the press than Oswald expected.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/clip/58962938/lee-harvey-oswald/|title=Marine Learns That the U.S.A. Dwarfs Russia|newspaper=Chicago Daily Tribune|date=June 9, 1962|page=55|via=]|access-date=September 9, 2020|archive-date=February 5, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210205173953/https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/clip/58962938/lee-harvey-oswald/|url-status=live}}{{open access}}</ref> According to the ], Oswald and his wife returned to America on June 13, they arrived onboard the ] and landed at ] in New Jersey. Here they were met by ] of the ] who had been contacted by the US Department of State.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |page=713 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |date=1964}}</ref> | |||
*Rifle | |||
:6.5 x 52 mm Italian ] M91/38 bolt-action rifle with a six-round ] | |||
:Serial number C2766 | |||
:Western Cartridge Co. ammunition with a 160 grain (10.37 g) round nose bullet | |||
:Side-mounted Ordnance Optics 4 x 18 telescopic sight | |||
=== Dallas–Fort Worth === | |||
Along with other possessions, Oswald kept the rifle wrapped in a blanket in the garage of the Paines' home, where Marina was living at the time. Oswald smuggled the rifle into the ] the morning of the assassination in a long brown paper package which he told a co-worker contained curtain rods. | |||
The Oswalds soon settled in the ] area, where Lee's mother and brother lived. Lee began a manuscript on Soviet life, though he eventually gave up the project.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=714}} The Oswalds also became acquainted with a number of anti-Communist Russian and East European émigrés in the area.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=716}}<ref>Summers 1998, p. 152.</ref> In testimony to the Warren Commission, Alexander Kleinlerer said that the Russian émigrés sympathized with Marina, while merely tolerating Oswald, whom they regarded as rude and arrogant.<ref group="n">Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, p. 123, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071010053542/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh11/html/WC_Vol11_0067a.htm |date=October 10, 2007 }}: "Anna Meller, Mrs. Hall, George Bouhe, and the deMohrenschildts, and all that group had pity for Marina and her child. None of us cared for Oswald because of his political philosophy, his criticism of the United States, his apparent lack of interest in anyone but himself, and because of his treatment of Marina."</ref> | |||
==The assassination of JFK== | |||
{{main|John F. Kennedy assassination}} | |||
While Marina and their child were staying with the Paines (Oswald lived alone in a rooming house) he found a temporary job (for the busy fall season) at the ]. The 1964 ] report on the John F. Kennedy assassination concluded that at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, Oswald shot Kennedy from a window on the sixth floor of the warehouse as the President's motorcade passed through Dallas' ] (see ]). Texas Governor ] was also seriously wounded along with assassination witness ] who received a very minor facial injury while standing some 270 feet (82 m) in front of the presidential limousine. | |||
Although the Russian émigrés eventually abandoned Marina when she made no sign of leaving her husband,<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, p. 298, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070926235908/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh11/html/WC_Vol11_0154b.htm |date=September 26, 2007 }}. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 2, p. 307, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927000747/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0158a.htm |date=September 27, 2007 }}. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 252, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927001048/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0130b.htm |date=September 27, 2007 }}. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 238, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011113744/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0123b.htm |date=October 11, 2007 }}. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 266, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071010060242/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0137b.htm |date=October 10, 2007 }}.</ref> Oswald found an unlikely friend in 51-year-old Russian émigré ], a well-educated petroleum geologist with international business connections.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131118132832/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol12/pdf/HSCA_Vol12_deMohren.pdf |date=November 18, 2013 }}. Staff Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, vol. 12, 4, p. 53–54, 1979.</ref><ref>Summers 1998, pp. 152–160.</ref> A native of Russia, Mohrenschildt later told the Warren Commission that Oswald had a "remarkable fluency in Russian".<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 226, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629192329/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0117b.htm |date=June 29, 2011 }}.</ref> Marina, meanwhile, befriended ],<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 2, p. 435, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165930/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0222a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> a ] trying to learn Russian, and her husband ], who worked for ].<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 2, p. 385, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629192151/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0197a.htm |date=June 29, 2011 }}.</ref> | |||
Critics have asserted that photographic and film evidence - along with witness statements throughout the years - indicate that there were at least one, or two, shooters in an area of Dealey Plaza known as the ], behind a picket fence atop a small sloping hill, which was to the right, and front, of President Kennedy. A number of witnesses reported seeing a flash of light and/or a puff of smoke come from behind the fence along with hearing shots from that direction. <!-- witnesses throughout the plaza reported the smell of gunpowder... Some also smelt gunpowder in the knoll area when they went to investigate. --> | |||
In July 1962, Oswald was hired by the Leslie Welding Company as a sheet metal worker in Dallas; he disliked the work and quit after three months. On October 12, he started working for the graphic-arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. A fellow employee at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall testified that Oswald's rudeness at his new job was such that fights threatened to break out, and that he once saw Oswald reading a Russian-language publication.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 10, pp. 199–205, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120113043607/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh10/html/WC_Vol10_0104a.htm |date=January 13, 2012 }}.</ref><ref group="n">Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Dennis Hyman Ofstein: "I would say he didn't get along with people and that several people had words with him at times about the way he barged around the plant, and one of the fellows back in the photosetter department almost got in a fight with him one day, and I believe it was Mr. Graef that stepped in and broke it up before it got started..."</ref> Oswald was fired in the first week of April 1963.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/pdf/WH23_CE_1886.pdf |title=Warren Report C.E. 1886 shows his last weekly paycheck was for work ending April 6. |access-date=September 17, 2010 |archive-date=June 13, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613234522/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/pdf/WH23_CE_1886.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
On the 8mm ] film it appears that President Kennedy's body was propelled to a back and leftward direction after the last shot. A large portion of brain matter was projected forward, with blood and brain matter from the forward-moving vehicle also striking the windshields of the motorcycle escorts that were behind. Jackie Kennedy reached over the back of the car to collect pieces of Kennedy´s brain matter and skull from the boot/trunk of the presidential limousine. | |||
=== Edwin Walker assassination attempt === | |||
==Oswald's flight and the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit== | |||
{{Main|John F. Kennedy assassination rifle}} | |||
According to the Warren Commission report, immediately after he shot President Kennedy, Oswald hid the rifle behind some boxes and descended via the Depository's elevator and then sent it back up. On the second floor he encountered Dallas police officer Marion Baker who had driven his motorcycle to the door of the Depository and sprinted up the stairs in search of the shooter. With him was Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly, who identified Oswald as an employee, which caused Baker, who had his pistol in hand, to let Oswald pass. Oswald bought a ] from a vending machine in the second floor lunchroom, crossed the floor to the front staircase, descended and left the building through the front entrance on Elm Street. | |||
]]] | |||
In March 1963, Oswald used the alias "A. Hidell" to make a mail-order purchase of a secondhand ] ] rifle for $19.95, plus $1.50 for shipping.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|pp=118–119}} He also purchased a .38 ] revolver by mail for $29.95 plus $1.27 shipping.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120415125621/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0296a.htm |date=April 15, 2012 }}, Warren Commission Report, Appendix 10, p. 567–571.</ref> The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald attempted to kill retired U.S. Major General ] on April 10, 1963, and that Oswald fired the Carcano rifle at Walker through a window from less than {{convert|100|ft|m}} away as Walker sat at a desk in his Dallas home. The bullet struck the window-frame and Walker's only injuries were bullet fragments to the forearm.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|pp=184–195}} The ] stated that the "evidence strongly suggested" that Oswald carried out the shooting.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605014339/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0046a.htm |date=June 5, 2011 }}, HSCA Final Report, p. 61.</ref> | |||
General Walker was an outspoken ], ], and member of the ]. In 1961, Walker had been relieved of his command of the 24th Division of the U.S. Army in ] for distributing ] literature to his troops.<ref>{{cite book|last=Scott|first=Peter Dale|title=Deep Politics and the Death of JFK|location=Los Angeles|publisher=University of California Press|year=1993|pages=34, 50|isbn=0-520-20519-7}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Summers|1998|pp=161–162}}</ref> Walker's later actions in opposition to ] at the ] led to his arrest on insurrection, seditious conspiracy, and other charges. He was temporarily held in a ] on orders from President Kennedy's brother, Attorney General ], but a ] declined to ] him.<ref>{{harvnb|Summers|1998|p=162}}</ref> | |||
At about 12:40 p.m. (CST), Oswald boarded a city bus by pounding on the door in the middle of a block, but when heavy traffic had slowed the bus to a halt he requested a bus transfer from the driver.<ref> (.gif) at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> He took a taxicab a few blocks beyond his rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley Ave. then walked back there to retrieve his revolver and beige jacket at about 1:00 p.m., and moments later left the house. He lingered briefly at a bus stop across the street from his rooming house, then began walking. His ultimate destination is unknown, but by the time he was stopped he had walked almost a mile (1.6 km) and was only four blocks away from a 1:40 p.m. city bus which could have connected him with a ] bus headed south for Mexico. | |||
Marina Oswald testified that her husband told her that he traveled by bus to General Walker's house and shot at Walker with his rifle.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130712023740/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh1/html/WC_Vol1_0015a.htm |date=July 12, 2013 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, volume 1, pg. 17.</ref>{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=187}} She said that Oswald considered Walker to be the leader of a "fascist organization".<ref name="Testimony of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald">"Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 1, p. 16, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165828/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh1/html/WC_Vol1_0014b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> A note Oswald left for Marina on the night of the attempt, telling her what to do if he did not return, was found ten days after the Kennedy assassination.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 392–393, CE 1785, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081205180801/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0212b.htm |date=December 5, 2008 }}.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081205180913/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0201a.htm |date=December 5, 2008 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 393–394.</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Oswald Notes Reported Left Before Walker Was Shot At|newspaper=Dallas Morning News|date=December 31, 1963|page=6}}.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Summers| 1998|pp=163–164}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
Officer ] had very likely heard the general description of the alleged shooter (based on the statement of witness ] who had seen Oswald in the window of the Depository from across the street) which was broadcast over the police radio at 12:45 p.m.. Thirty minutes later Tippit encountered Oswald near the corner of Patton Avenue and 10th Street and pulled up to talk to him through his patrol car window. Tippit then got out of his car and Oswald fired at the police officer with his .38 caliber revolver. Four of the shots hit Tippit, killing him instantly in view of several witnesses.<ref> (page 165) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> Oswald reloaded his revolver as he walked away, throwing the empty cartridge cases into some bushes. At least a dozen people either witnessed the shooting or identified Oswald as fleeing the scene. A cab driver hiding behind his taxi heard Oswald mutter "poor dumb cop" or "poor damn cop" as he walked by. Oswald then broke into a run, still holding the pistol in his hand. Moments later, Oswald dropped his jacket in a parking lot. Officer Tippit's service revolver was found under his body, out of its holster. | |||
Before the Kennedy assassination, Dallas police had no suspects in the Walker shooting,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/pdf/HSCA_Report_1A_LHO.pdf |title=HSCA Final Report: I. Findings – A. Lee Harvey Oswald Fired Three Shots... |pages=60–61 |access-date=September 17, 2010 |archive-date=March 14, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120314015935/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/pdf/HSCA_Report_1A_LHO.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> but Oswald's involvement was suspected within hours of his arrest following the assassination.<ref>{{cite news|title=Officials Recall Sniper Shooting at Walker Home|newspaper=Dallas Morning News|date=November 23, 1963|page=15}}</ref> The Walker bullet was too damaged to run conclusive ballistics studies on it,<ref>{{cite news|title=FBI Unable to Link Walker Slug, Rifle|newspaper=Dallas Morning News|date=December 20, 1963|page=7}}</ref> but ] later showed that it was "extremely likely" that it was made by the same manufacturer and for the same rifle make as the two bullets which later struck Kennedy.<ref group="n">], | |||
] | |||
A few minutes later, Oswald ducked into the entrance alcove of a shoe store on Jefferson Street to avoid passing police cars, then slipped into the nearby ] without paying (the film being shown was '']'', narrated by ]). The shoe store's manager saw all of this, followed him and alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who phoned police. Once inside, Oswald changed seats several times. The police quickly arrived and poured into the theater as the lights were turned on. Officer M.N. McDonald approached Oswald sitting near the rear and ordered him to stand. Oswald punched McDonald and drew his revolver. The officer's report states that Oswald pulled the trigger, but the hammer came down on the skin between the thumb and hand of the officer, who was attempting to grab the pistol, and the weapon did not fire. McDonald briefly struggled with Oswald before other officers subdued and arrested him at 1:50 p.m.. As he was led past an angry crowd who had gathered outside the theater, shouting for Oswald's death, he yelled back that he was a victim of police brutality. | |||
{{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929133349/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscaguin.htm |date=September 29, 2007 }}: | |||
Oswald was booked on suspicion first as a suspect in the shooting of Officer Tippit and shortly afterward on suspicion of murdering President Kennedy. By the end of the evening he had been arraigned for both murders.<ref> (page 200) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> Oswald's elder brother Robert visited Lee in jail and asked him quizzically, "Lee, what in the Sam Hill is going on?" Lee Oswald replied coldly with a straight face, "I don't know." Robert responded, "Look, the police have your pistol, they have your rifle and you've been charged with the shooting of the President and a police officer and you tell me you don't know?" | |||
:Mr. WOLF. In your professional opinion, Dr. Guinn, is the fragment removed from General Walker's house a fragment from a WCC (]) Mannlicher–Carcano bullet? | |||
:Dr. GUINN. I would say that it is extremely likely that it is, because there are very few, very few other ammunitions that would be in this range. I don't know of any that are specifically this close as these numbers indicate, but somewhere near them there are a few others, but essentially this is in the range that is rather characteristic of WCC Mannlicher–Carcano bullet lead.</ref> | |||
] testified that he "knew that Oswald disliked General Walker".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150414225822/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0129a.htm |date=April 14, 2015 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 249.</ref> Regarding this, de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne recalled an incident that occurred the weekend following the Walker assassination attempt. The de Mohrenschildts testified that on April 14, 1963, just before Easter Sunday, they were visiting the Oswalds at their new apartment and had brought them a toy Easter bunny to give to their child. As Oswald's wife Marina was showing Jeanne around the apartment, they discovered Oswald's rifle standing upright, leaning against the wall inside a closet. Jeanne told George that Oswald had a rifle, and George joked to Oswald, "Were you the one who took a pot-shot at General Walker?" When asked about Oswald's reaction to this question, George de Mohrenschildt told the Warren Commission that Oswald "smiled at that".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150414225822/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0129a.htm |date=April 14, 2015 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, pp. 249–250.</ref> When de Mohrenschildt's wife Jeanne was asked about Oswald's reaction, she said, "I didn't notice anything", and continued, "we started laughing our heads off, big joke, big George's joke".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150529222600/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0161b.htm |date=May 29, 2015 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, pp. 314–317.</ref> Jeanne de Mohrenschildt testified that this was the last time she or her husband ever saw the Oswalds.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150529222600/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0161b.htm |date=May 29, 2015 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 314.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Summers|1998|p=172}}</ref> | |||
While in custody, Oswald had an impromptu, face-to-face brush with reporters and photographers in the hallway of the police station. A reporter asked him, "Did you shoot the President?" and Oswald answered, "I have not been accused of that. In fact, I didn't even know about it until a reporter in the hall asked me that question." Later Oswald said to reporters, "I didn't shoot anyone," and "They're taking me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!" | |||
=== New Orleans === | |||
==Oswald's murder== | |||
] | |||
]-winning photograph of the same event.]] | |||
] {{circa|May–September 1963}}.]] | |||
By the morning of Sunday, ] the Dallas police had already received many death threats directed toward Oswald that homicide detective Jim Leavelle tried to convince police Captain J.W. "Will" Fritz to break his promise to reporters that they could photograph the suspected assassin as he was transferred to a nearby jail. Instead, Leavelle proposed to sneak Oswald out of the crowded building at an earlier time. Fritz refused, although extensive precautions (including the decision to use an armored truck as a decoy) were taken to secure the area where Oswald would be briefly exposed to reporters and cameras. Leavelle later recalled the conversation he had with Oswald as they rode down the elevator handcuffed together: | |||
] in New Orleans, August 9, 1963]] | |||
] | |||
Oswald returned to New Orleans on April 24, 1963.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|p=403}} Marina's friend Ruth Paine drove her by car from Dallas to join Oswald in New Orleans the following month.<ref name="aarclibrary.org">The Warren Report, Chapter 6, p. 284, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111130653/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0154b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}</ref> On May 10, Oswald was hired by the ] as a machinery greaser.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|pp=403–404}} He was fired in July "because his work was not satisfactory and because he spent too much time loitering in Adrian Alba's garage next door, where he read rifle and hunting magazines".<ref name="Summers, Anthony 1998 p. 219">Summers 1998, p. 219.</ref> | |||
:"I said, 'Lee, if anybody shoots at you, I hope they're as good a shot as you are.' Meaning they'd hit him and not me. And he kind of laughed and he said, 'Ah, you're being melodramatic.' Or something like that. 'Nobody's going to shoot me.' I said, 'Well, if they do start, you know what to do, don't you?' He said, 'Well, Captain Fritz told me to follow you, and I'll do whatever you do."<ref></ref> | |||
In his 1988 book '']'', New Orleans District Attorney ] claimed that Oswald really spent that time across the street at 544 Camp Street. These were the law offices of ], a former FBI agent, an avid segregationist, and a local politician. Garrison added that Guy Banister, during the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, was most interested in infiltrating the ], and used Oswald as his spy.<ref name="TrailAssassins" /> In their 1978 investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated a possible connection between Oswald and Banister at the Camp Street address. The HSCA wrote that it "could find no documentary proof that Banister had a file on Lee Harvey Oswald nor could the committee find credible witnesses whoever saw Lee Harvey Oswald and Guy Banister together. There are, however, indications that Banister at least knew of Oswald's leafletting activities and probably maintained a file on him."<ref name="HSCA-X">{{cite book |title=Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=156001 |volume=X |date=March 1979 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=131 |chapter=XIII. 544 Camp Street and Related Events |chapter-url=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=156127 |ref={{harvid|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979}} |access-date=September 15, 2022 |archive-date=December 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191212031444/http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=156001 |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
Moments later, at 11:21 am CST, Oswald was shot and fatally wounded before live TV cameras in the basement of Dallas police headquarters by ], a Dallas ] owner with many friends and acquaintances in the Dallas Police and the underworld. Millions watched the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the first time a homicide was captured and shown publicly on live television; however, it was carried live only on ], one of the three major networks in the US at that time, via a live remote from their Dallas-Ft. Worth affiliate station WBAP-TV. The CBS affiliate, KRLD-TV, was also present with a live truck at Dallas Police headquarters; however, the network was in the midst of a commentary and did not switch to the live feed until a minute or so after the shooting. Both networks replayed the incident from videotape many times over in the following days. | |||
On May 26, Oswald wrote to the New York City headquarters of the pro-] ], proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140819214702/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0266b.htm |date=August 19, 2014 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 512.</ref> Three days later, the FPCC responded to Oswald's letter advising against opening a New Orleans office "at least not ... at the very beginning".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111170541/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0268a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 515.</ref> In a follow-up letter, Oswald replied, "Against your advice, I have decided to take an office from the very beginning."<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165309/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0269b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 518.</ref> On May 29, Oswald ordered the following items from a local printer: 500 application forms, 300 membership cards, and 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba".<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602200233/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0402a.htm |date=June 2, 2013 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 25, pp. 770, 773.</ref> According to Marina, Lee told her to sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on his membership card.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|p=407}} | |||
Unconscious, Oswald was rushed to the hospital where ] died. Doctors did their best to save him, but Ruby's single bullet had severed major abdominal blood vessels, and the doctors were unable to repair the massive trauma. At 48 hours and 7 minutes after the president's death, his accused slayer was pronounced dead. | |||
According to anti-Castro militant ], Oswald visited him on August 5 and 6 at a store he owned in New Orleans. Bringuier was the New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro organization ] (DRE). Bringuier would later tell the Warren Commission that he believed Oswald's visits were an attempt by Oswald to infiltrate his group.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 10, pp. 34–37, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111164640/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh10/html/WC_Vol10_0021b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> On August 9, Oswald turned up in downtown New Orleans handing out pro-Castro leaflets. Bringuier confronted Oswald, claiming he was tipped off about Oswald's leafleting by a friend. A scuffle ensued and Oswald, Bringuier, and two of Bringuier's friends were arrested for disturbing the peace.<ref>Summers 1998, p. 211.</ref><ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031023104538/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/WH17_CE_826.pdf |date=October 23, 2003 }}, August 15, 1963, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 17, pp. 758–764, Commission Exhibit 826</ref> Prior to leaving the police station, Oswald requested to speak with an FBI agent.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=728}} Oswald told the agent that he was a member of the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which he claimed had 35 members and was led by A. J. Hidell.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=728}} In fact, Oswald was the branch's only member and it had never been chartered by the national organization.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|pp=728–729}} | |||
The route Ruby took to get down into the basement of the Dallas jail has been disputed, although Ruby was very specific about having used the basement vehicle entrance ramp (along with his access to the jail on other days), as recorded during a ] test Ruby insisted on taking and documented in a Warren Report appendix. A former Dallas police officer named Napoleon Daniels also said he saw Ruby use the ramp. Skeptics speculate Ruby entered the basement from inside police headquarters. The use of a route through the jail building suggests to some that Ruby received help from authorities inside the building, but many journalists entered the building without having their credentials checked and Ruby can be seen on film inside the building on the previous Friday night, apparently posing as a reporter. | |||
A week later, on August 16, Oswald again passed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets with two hired helpers, this time in front of the ]. The incident was filmed by ].<ref>{{Citation |title=WDSU Archives: WDSU interview with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 | date=November 22, 2013 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tInqL3g6vJw |access-date=November 25, 2023 |language=en |archive-date=November 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231125035644/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tInqL3g6vJw |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Summers 1998, pp. 211–212.</ref> The next day, Oswald was interviewed by ] commentator William Stuckey, who probed Oswald's background.<ref name="Douglas, James 2008 p. 65">Douglas, James. ''JFK and the Unspeakable'', (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 65. {{ISBN|978-1-4391-9388-4}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9k5C94ENw | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100721082523/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9k5C94ENw| archive-date=July 21, 2010 | url-status=dead|title=Lee Harvey Oswald interview with William K Stuckey part 1 |publisher=YouTube |access-date=August 16, 2011}}</ref> A few days later, Oswald accepted Stuckey's invitation to take part in a radio debate with Carlos Bringuier and Bringuier's associate Edward Scannell Butler, head of the right-wing Information Council of the Americas (INCA).<ref name="Douglas, James 2008 p. 65" /><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 21, p. 633, Stuckey Exhibit 3, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927001441/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0329a.htm |date=September 27, 2007 }}, Radio station WDSU, New Orleans.</ref><ref>Summers 1998, p. 212.</ref> | |||
Ruby was known to carry his pistol routinely. In preparations for his trial, Ruby later stated he killed Oswald on the spur of the moment to spare Jacqueline Kennedy the stress and embarrassment a trial would cause her. Corroborating this is the fact that he stopped to send an employee some money by wire on his way to the police station, an act that would have caused him to miss the Oswald transfer, had it not been late. He also took his dog and left it in the car-- another act which does not seem likely for a man planning to shoot someone in a police station and therefore be abandoning the vehicle. | |||
=== Mexico === | |||
During the trial his defense team, headed by prominent ] defense attorney ], did not use these facts. Instead they suggested that Ruby's actions were related to an epileptic event brought on by the photographers’ camera flashbulbs and movie camera lights. However, immediately after his arrest Ruby had told Dallas policemen that the American people would view him "as a hero," that he had maintained Dallas's "good reputation" and/or that the murder was proof that "Jews have guts." Belli later said, "he never thought he'd spend a night in jail." (Ruby was ultimately found guilty of capital (premeditated) murder and sentenced to death.) | |||
Marina's friend Ruth Paine transported Marina and her child by car from New Orleans to the Paine home in ], near Dallas, on September 23, 1963.<ref name="aarclibrary.org" /><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, pp. 7–9, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629191811/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0008a.htm |date=June 29, 2011 }}.</ref> Oswald stayed in New Orleans at least two more days to collect a $33 unemployment check. It is uncertain when he left New Orleans; he is next known to have boarded a bus in ] on September 26 – bound for the Mexican border, rather than Dallas – and to have told other bus passengers that he planned to travel to Cuba via Mexico.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13|1964|p=732}}<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, pp. 214–215, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165147/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh11/html/WC_Vol11_0112b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> He arrived in ] on September 27, where he applied for a transit visa at the Cuban consulate,<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 25, p. 418, CE 2564, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165818/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0422b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> claiming he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union. The Cuban consular officials insisted Oswald would need Soviet approval, but he was unable to get prompt co-operation from the Soviet consulate. CIA documents note Oswald spoke "terrible hardly recognizable Russian" during his meetings with Cuban and Soviet officials.<ref name="wallace">{{cite news |last1=Wallace |first1=Gregory |title=CIA wondered if Oswald sought visas as part of escape plan |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/oswald-cuba-russia-visas/index.html |access-date=December 17, 2019 |publisher=CNN |date=November 5, 2017 |archive-date=December 17, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191217125859/https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/oswald-cuba-russia-visas/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
After five days of shuttling between consulates – and including a heated argument with an official at the Cuban consulate, impassioned pleas to KGB agents, and at least some CIA scrutiny<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211027180141/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcmemos/Oswald_Foreign_Activities/html/180-10096-10364_0099a.htm |date=October 27, 2021 }} (page 94) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''</ref> – Oswald was told by a Cuban consular officer that he was disinclined to approve the visa, saying "a person like in place of aiding the Cuban Revolution, was doing it harm".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|p=413}} Later, on October 18, the Cuban embassy approved the visa, but by this time Oswald was back in the United States and had given up on his plans to visit Cuba and the Soviet Union. Still later, eleven days before the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald wrote to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., saying, "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in ], as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business."<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170806035656/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/forum/ |date=August 6, 2017 }}, ], November 20, 2003</ref><ref>HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 8, p. 358, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070903083828/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/html/HSCA_Vol8_0181b.htm |date=September 3, 2007 }}. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050522003737/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/cia/201/104-10004-10202/html/104-10004-10202_0019a.htm |date=May 22, 2005 }}, December 13, 1963. (page 19) at ''The Assassination Archives and Research Center''.</ref> | |||
After a full autopsy Oswald's body was returned to his family. | |||
While the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had visited Mexico City and the Cuban and Soviet consulates, questions regarding whether someone posing as Oswald had appeared at the embassies were serious enough to be investigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Later, the Committee agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald had visited Mexico City and concluded that "the majority of evidence tends to indicate" that Oswald visited the consulates, but the Committee could not rule out the possibility that someone else had used his name in visiting the consulates.<ref>House Select Committee on Assassinations, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604142358/http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt/html/LopezRpt_0018a.htm |date=June 4, 2011 }}, p. 121.</ref> | |||
Oswald's grave is in Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in ].<ref> at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> The inexpensive coffin was provided at the expense of the state. The November 25th burial and funeral were paid for by Oswald's brother Robert. There was no religious service and reporters acted as pallbearers. When his mother died in 1981 she was buried next to Oswald with no headstone. Originally his headstone read ''Lee Harvey Oswald'', but this marker was stolen and replaced with one which only reads ''Oswald''. His wife Marina, who was sequestered by federal agents the day after the assassination and later released, married Kenneth Porter in 1965 and her two daughters June and Rachel took Porter's last name. | |||
According to a CIA document released in 2017, it is possible Oswald was trying to get the necessary documents from the embassies to make a quick escape to the Soviet Union after the assassination.<ref name="wallace" /> | |||
==Investigations== | |||
*The ] created by President ] on ], ] to investigate the assassination concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy and that he acted alone (also known as the ]). The proceedings of the commission were secret and about 3% of its files have yet to be released to the public which has continued to provoke speculation among skeptics. | |||
=== Return to Dallas === | |||
*In 1966 and 1967 New Orleans District Attorney ] conducted an investigation which culminated in the trial and acquittal of ]. This failed prosecution was the only charge ever brought for conspiracy in the murder of JFK. | |||
], the building where Oswald worked, and from which he shot Kennedy]] | |||
On October 2, 1963, Oswald left Mexico City by bus and arrived in Dallas the next day. Ruth Paine said that a neighbor told her on October 14 about a job opening at the ], where her neighbor's brother, Wesley Frazier, worked. Mrs. Paine informed Oswald, who was interviewed at the depository and was hired there on October 16 as a $1.25 an hour minimum wage order filler.<ref name="WCR-C1">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=14–15 |chapter=Chapter 1: Summary and Conclusions |chapter-url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 1|1964}} |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408112649/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report |url-status=live }}</ref> Oswald's supervisor, Roy S. Truly (1907–1985), said that Oswald "did a good day's work" and was an above-average employee.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 216, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724214705/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0112b.htm |date=July 24, 2011 }}.</ref><ref>Summers 1998, p. 282.</ref> During the week, Oswald stayed in a ] under the name "O. H. Lee",<ref name="Saturday2">{{cite journal |last=Bagdikian |first=Ben H. |author-link=Ben Bagdikian |editor1-first=Clay Jr. |editor1-last=Blair |editor1-link=Clay Blair |date=December 14, 1963 |title=The Assassin |journal=The Saturday Evening Post |issue=44 |page=26 |publisher=The Curtis Publishing Company |location=Philadelphia, PA}}</ref> but he spent his weekends with Marina at the ] in ]. Oswald did not drive a car, but he commuted to and from Dallas on Mondays and Fridays with his co-worker Wesley Frazier. On October 20 (a month before the assassination), the Oswalds' second daughter, Audrey, was born.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 22, Commission Exhibit No. 1165, p. 17.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2013/11/10/as-paparazzi-stalk-her-kennedy-assassin-s-widow-lives-quiet-dallas-area-life/ |title=As paparazzi stalk her, Kennedy assassin's widow lives quiet Dallas-area life |date=November 10, 2013 |access-date=March 26, 2021 |archive-date=July 30, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220730090432/https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2013/11/10/as-paparazzi-stalk-her-kennedy-assassin-s-widow-lives-quiet-dallas-area-life/ |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
*In 1968 The ] Panel met in Washington, DC to examine various photographs, X-ray films documents and other evidence pertaining to the death of President Kennedy. It concluded that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its right side.<ref> (.txt) at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> | |||
The Dallas branch of the FBI became interested in Oswald after its agent learned that the CIA had determined that Oswald had been in contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico, making Oswald a possible espionage case.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Posner |first1=Gerald |title=The Posner Files: Case Closed and Killing the Dream |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S1BwDwAAQBAJ&q=%22oswald+was+in+contact+with+the+soviet+embassy%22+case+closed&pg=PT107 |publisher=Open Road Media |access-date=November 22, 2020 |language=en |date=October 2, 2018|isbn=978-1-5040-5618-2 }}</ref> FBI agents twice visited the Paine home in early November, when Oswald was not present, and spoke to Mrs. Paine.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170826111912/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-13.html |date=August 26, 2017 }}.</ref> Oswald visited the Dallas FBI office about two to three weeks before the assassination, asking to see Special Agent ]. When he was told that Hosty was unavailable, Oswald left a note that, according to the receptionist, read: "Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police Department if you don't stop bothering my wife" "Lee Harvey Oswald". The note allegedly contained a threat, but accounts vary as to whether Oswald threatened to "blow up the FBI" or merely "report this to higher authorities". According to Hosty, the note said, "If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don't cease bothering my wife, I will take the appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities." Agent Hosty said that he destroyed Oswald's note on orders from his superior, Gordon Shanklin, after Oswald was named the suspect in the Kennedy assassination.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165008/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0113a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, House Select Committee on Assassinations, pp. 195–196.</ref><ref>Summers 1998, pp. 283–286.</ref> | |||
*In 1979, an investigation by the ], concluded that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy "most-likely ...as the result of a ]." This finding was based on studies of ] audio recordings which were later called into question when communications known to have been made after the shooting were discovered on the tape. {{see|Dictabelt evidence relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy}} | |||
== John F. Kennedy and J. D. Tippit shootings == | |||
*In 1992, Congress enacted legislation creating the ] ("ARRB") to collect and obtain declassification of government documents relating to the murder of President Kennedy.<ref> (index), ], September, 1998</ref> The purpose of this board would be to eventually make the evidence available to the Public so people can make up their own minds as to what occurred involving the murder of President Kennedy. The ARRB described this in the preface to its Final Report in 1998: | |||
{{Main|Assassination of John F. Kennedy}} | |||
] standing in the same spot across the street from the ] four months after the assassination. Circle "A" indicates where he saw Oswald fire a rifle at the presidential motorcade.]] | |||
In the days before Kennedy's arrival, several local newspapers published the route of Kennedy's motorcade, which passed the Texas School Book Depository.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112204055/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dmntue.gif |date=January 12, 2012 }}, November 19, 1963. , November 19, 1963, p. A-13.</ref> On Thursday, November 21, 1963, Oswald asked Frazier for an unusual mid-week lift back to Irving, saying he had to pick up some ]s. The next morning (the day of the assassination), he returned to Dallas with Frazier. He left $170 and his wedding ring,<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171027031528/http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol1/page72.php |date=October 27, 2017 }}.</ref> but took a large paper bag with him. Frazier reported that Oswald told him the bag contained curtain rods.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725112728/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0117b.htm |date=July 25, 2018 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 2, pp. 226–227.</ref><ref name=longbrownriflebag>Magen Knuth, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190908074645/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bag.htm |date=September 8, 2019 }}.</ref> The Warren Commission concluded that the package of "curtain rods" actually contained the rifle that Oswald was going to use for the assassination.<ref name="curtainrods">National Archives, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628191606/http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html#curtain |date=June 28, 2011 }}. Retrieved January 4, 2013.</ref> | |||
One of Oswald's co-workers, Charles Givens, testified to the Commission that he last saw Oswald on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at approximately 11:55 a.m., which was 35 minutes before the motorcade entered Dealey Plaza.<ref group="n">Warren Commission Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110525072458/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/givens1.htm |date=May 25, 2011 }}.</ref> The Commission report stated that Oswald was not seen again "until after the shooting".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0090b.htm|publisher=History Matters Archive|page=156|title=Warren Report|access-date=February 4, 2013|archive-date=January 9, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130109084436/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0090b.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> In an FBI report taken the day after the assassination, Givens said that the encounter took place at 11:30 a.m. and that he saw Oswald reading a newspaper in the first-floor domino room at 11:50 a.m, 20 minutes later.<ref>, November 23, 1963, Warren Commission Document 5, p. 329.</ref><ref>Summers 1998), p. 58.</ref> William Shelley, a foreman at the depository, also testified that he saw Oswald near the telephone on the first floor between 11:45 and 11:50 a.m.<ref>{{cite web|title=Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VII|url=http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0199b.htm|publisher=History Matters Archive|page=390|access-date=February 4, 2013|archive-date=January 9, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130109083716/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0199b.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Janitor Eddie Piper also testified that he spoke to Oswald on the first floor at 12:00 p.m.<ref>{{cite web|title=Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VI|url=http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0197a.htm|publisher=History Matters Archive|page=383|access-date=February 4, 2013|archive-date=January 9, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130109083659/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0197a.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Another co-worker, Bonnie Ray Williams, was eating his lunch on the sixth floor of the depository and was there until at least 12:10 p.m.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 173, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165017/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0091a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> He said that during that time, he did not see Oswald, or anyone else, on the sixth floor and thought that he was the only person up there.<ref>Summers 1998, pp. 59–60.</ref> He also said that some boxes in the southeast corner may have prevented him from seeing deep into the "sniper's nest".<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 170, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141013182231/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0089b.htm |date=October 13, 2014 }}.</ref> Various workers – including Givens, Junior Jarman, Troy West, Danny Arce, Jack Dougherty, Joe Molina, Mrs. Robert Reid, and Bill Lovelady – who were either in the first or second floor lunchrooms at times between 12:00 and 12:30 pm reported that Oswald was not present in those rooms during their lunch breaks.{{sfn|Posner|1993|pages=225–226}}<ref group="n">Carolyn Arnold, the secretary to the Vice President of the TSBD, provided conflicting information on Oswald's whereabouts. In the first of two interviews with the FBI in the days following the assassination, Arnold stated that she my have "caught a fleeting glimpse" of someone she believed to be Oswald standing in the first-floor hallway of the building around 12:15 pm. In the second interview, she stated she did not see him at all. Although she signed her statement as correct, in 1978 she told author Anthony Summers that she had been misquoted by the FBI and that she had actually seen Oswald in the second floor lunchroom at 12:15 pm.{{harv|Posner|1993|pages=225–226}}.</ref> | |||
<blockquote>Previous assassination-related commissions and committees were established for the purpose of issuing final reports that would draw conclusions about the assassination. Congress did not, however, direct the Review Board to draw conclusions about the assassination, but to release assassination records so that the public could draw its own conclusions.<ref> (preface), ], September, 1998</ref></blockquote> | |||
As Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza at approximately 12:30 p.m. on November 22, Oswald fired three rifle shots from the southeast-corner window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository,<ref name="WCR-C3">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=117 |chapter=Chapter 3: The Shots from the Texas School Book Depository |chapter-url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 3|1964}} |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408112649/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report |url-status=live }}</ref> killing the President and seriously wounding Texas Governor ]. One shot apparently missed ] entirely, another struck both Kennedy and Connally, and a third bullet struck Kennedy in the head,{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 1|1964|p=19}} killing him. Bystander ] received a minor facial injury from a small piece of curbstone that had fragmented after it was struck by one of the bullets. | |||
===The 1981 exhumation=== | |||
In October 1981 Oswald's body was ] at the behest of ] writer Michael Eddowes, with Marina Oswald Porter's support. They sought to prove a thesis developed in a 1975 book, ''Khrushchev Killed Kennedy'' (republished in 1976 in Britain as ''November 22: How They Killed Kennedy'' and in America a year later as ''The Oswald File''). | |||
The theory of the trio of books was that during Oswald's stay in the ], he was swapped with a Soviet double named Alek, who was a member of a KGB assassination squad. He claimed that this Soviet double killed Kennedy. Eddowes's support for his thesis was a claim that the corpse buried in ] in the Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park cemetery in ], ] did not have a scar that resulted from surgery conducted on Oswald years before. When Oswald's body was exhumed it was found that the coffin had ruptured and filled with water, leaving the body in an advanced state of decomposition with partial skeletonization. The examination positively identified Oswald's corpse through dental records, and also a mastoid scar from a childhood surgery. Contrary to reports, the skull of Oswald had been autopsied and this was confirmed at the exhumation. | |||
Witness ] was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository and watching the motorcade go by. He notified police that he heard a shot come from above and looked up to see a man with a rifle fire another shot from the southeast corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking through the window.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 143, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180726072313/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0076a.htm |date=July 26, 2018 }}.</ref> Brennan gave a description of the shooter,<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 145, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180726072308/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0077a.htm |date=July 26, 2018 }}</ref> and Dallas police subsequently broadcast descriptions at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/|title=The JFK Assassination Dallas Police Tapes: History in Real Time|date=November 22, 1963|first=John|last=McAdams|work=The Kennedy Assassination|publisher=Marquette University|access-date=November 26, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130321161509/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/|archive-date=March 21, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> After the second shot was fired, Brennan recalled, "This man I saw previous was aiming for his last shot ... and maybe paused for another second as though to assure himself that he had hit his mark."<ref>{{cite book|last=Summers|first=Anthony|title=Not in Your Lifetime|year=2013|publisher=Open Road|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4804-3548-3|page=62}}</ref> | |||
===Acceptance of the Conclusions=== | |||
Polls indicate the majority of Americans disbelieve official government conclusions regarding the assassination. For example, a 2003 ] poll found that 70% of respondents suspected there was an assassination plot<ref name="abc"/>; or again, a 1998 ] poll found only 10% believed Oswald acted alone.<ref>Jarrett Murphy, , ], November 21, 2003</ref> | |||
The paper bag Frazier had described was found by police near the open sixth-floor window from which Oswald was determined to have fired;<ref name=longbrownriflebag /> it was {{convert|38|in|cm}} long and had marks on its inside consistent with having been used to carry a rifle.<ref name=longbrownriflebag /> Three ] were found on the floor near the window, and a ] with ] was found on the northwest corner of the sixth-floor near the staircase.<ref>{{Cite web|url = https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html|title = Chapter 4|date = August 15, 2016|access-date = September 2, 2017|archive-date = June 28, 2011|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110628191606/http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html|url-status = live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url = https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html|title = Warren Commission Report Chapter 3|date = August 15, 2016|access-date = September 2, 2017|archive-date = October 27, 2017|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171027143848/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html|url-status = live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jfk.org/exhibits/john-f-kennedy-and-the-memory-of-a-nation/|title=John F. Kennedy and the Memory of a Nation | the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza|access-date=November 17, 2020|archive-date=November 29, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221129205152/https://www.jfk.org/exhibits/john-f-kennedy-and-the-memory-of-a-nation/|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
==== Assassination Theories==== | |||
Critics have not accepted the official government conclusions and have proposed a number of ] which assert that Oswald conspired with others or Oswald was not involved at all and was framed. However, many of these theories contradict each other, and no single compelling alternative suspect or conspirator has emerged. One government investigation, the HSCA, ruled out many of these theories but concluded that, while Oswald was the assassin, that Kennedy was "probably" killed as the result of a conspiracy. However, the HSCA report did not identify any probable co-conspirators and its conclusion has been criticised for its reliance upon ] that has been called into question. | |||
According to the investigations, after the shooting Oswald covered the rifle with boxes and descended via the rear stairwell. About 90 seconds after the shots sounded, he was encountered in the second-floor lunchroom by Dallas police officer Marrion L. Baker, who was with Oswald's supervisor, Roy Truly. Baker let Oswald pass after Truly identified him as an employee. Baker later said Oswald did not seem "nervous" or "out of breath".<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 263, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150110101341/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0136a.htm |date=January 10, 2015 }}.</ref> Truly said that Oswald looked "startled" when Baker pointed his gun directly at him.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=152}}<ref>Summers 1998, p. 63.</ref> Mrs. Robert Reid, a clerical supervisor at the depository who returned to her office within two minutes of the shooting, said she saw Oswald, "very calm", on the second floor holding a ] bottle.<ref>Summers 1998, p. 64.</ref> As they walked past each other, Mrs. Reid said to Oswald, "The President has been shot" to which he mumbled something in response, but Reid did not understand him.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, pp. 273–275, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190207015002/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0141a.htm |date=February 7, 2019 }}</ref> Oswald was believed to have left the depository through the front entrance just before police sealed it off. Truly later pointed out to officers that Oswald was the only employee that he was certain was missing.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215222316/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0119b.htm |date=December 15, 2018 }}.</ref><ref>Warren Commission Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215223115/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh4/html/WC_Vol4_0107b.htm |date=December 15, 2018 }}</ref> | |||
==Oswald in fiction and pop culture== | |||
] | |||
One of Oswald's Marine Corps comrades, ], shortly after learning of Oswald's October 1959 departure for the ], began writing a novel titled ''The Idle Warriors;'' its ] of Johnny Shellburne (a disillusioned Marine stationed in Japan who defects to the Soviet Union) being significantly inspired by Oswald's character and actions. ''The Idle Warriors'' is currently the only known literary work about Lee Oswald completed before the JFK assassination. Although an unpublished copy of Thornley's completed manuscript had been given to the Warren Commission in 1964 and was later stored in the ], ''The Idle Warriors'' was not formally published until 1991. | |||
At about 12:40 p.m., 10 minutes after the shooting, Oswald boarded a city bus. Probably due to heavy traffic, he requested a transfer from the driver and got off two blocks later.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514133342/http://jfkassassination.net/transfer.gif |date=May 14, 2011 }} at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> Oswald then took a taxicab to his rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Avenue and entered through the front door at about 1:00 p.m. According to his housekeeper Earlene Roberts, Oswald immediately went to his room, "walking pretty fast".<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, pp. 438–439, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725111920/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0225a.htm |date=July 25, 2018 }}.</ref> Roberts said that Oswald left "a very few minutes" later, zipping up a jacket he was not wearing when he had entered earlier. As Oswald left, Roberts looked out of the window of her house and last saw him standing at the northbound Beckley Avenue bus stop in front of her house.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, p. 439, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725112714/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0224a.htm |date=July 25, 2018 }}.</ref><ref>Summers 1998, p. 66. {{ISBN|1-56924-739-0}}</ref> | |||
] and ] present another interpretation of the events in their musical '']''. In the play Oswald goes to work on November 22 with the intention of killing himself, but ] (] assassin) appears out of the bookcases. When Oswald declares that he has given up on mattering to anyone, Booth replies that in killing himself, Oswald honestly hopes for the pity of people, something to make him matter. But that's not enough. In killing the president of the United States he'll matter more than he ever has. People will hate him; but from starting as a person who is treated only with apathy, to becoming a figure whom people feel so passionatly about, he can matter. Other assassins follow and convince Oswald that the way to gain his fame, appreciation and purpose is to shoot Kennedy instead of himself. | |||
The Warren Commission concluded that at approximately 1:15 p.m., Dallas Patrolman ] drove up in his patrol car alongside Oswald, presumably because Oswald resembled the broadcast description of the man seen by witness Howard Brennan firing shots at Kennedy's motorcade. He encountered Oswald near the corner of East 10th Street and North Patton Avenue.<ref>Oswald was {{convert|5|ft|9|in|m}} tall and weighed {{convert|150|lb|kg}}. Warren Commission Hearings Vol. 26, p. 521.</ref>{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 1|1964|p=6}} This location is about {{convert|9/10|mile|km|adj=pre|of a|spell=in}} southeast of Oswald's rooming house – a distance that the Warren Commission concluded "Oswald could have easily walked".<ref>The Warren Report, Appendix 12, p. 648, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725110918/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0336b.htm |date=July 25, 2018 }}</ref> Tippit pulled alongside Oswald and "apparently exchanged words with through the right front or vent window".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=165}} "Shortly after 1:15 p.m.",<ref group="n">The {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100204081624/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/tapes2.htm |date=February 4, 2010 }} was transmitted over Police Channel 1 sometime between 1:16 and 1:19 p.m., as indicated by verbal time stamps made periodically by the dispatcher. Specifically, the first report began 1 minute 41 seconds after the 1: 16 time stamp. Before that, witness Domingo Benavides could be heard unsuccessfully trying to use Tippit's police radio microphone, beginning at 1:16. Dale K. Myers, ''With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit'', 1998, p. 384. {{ISBN|0-9662709-7-5}}.</ref> Tippit exited his car. Oswald immediately fired his pistol and killed the policeman with four shots.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=165}}<ref>The third eyewitness was Jack Ray Tatum. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165901/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol12/html/HSCA_Vol12_0023a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 12, p. 40–41.</ref> Numerous witnesses heard the shots and saw Oswald flee the scene holding a revolver; nine positively identified him as the man who shot Tippit and fled.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=166}}<ref group="n">By the evening of November 22, five of them (Helen Markham, Barbara Jeanette Davis, Virginia Davis, Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard) had identified Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. A sixth (William Scoggins) did so the next day. Three others (Harold Russell, Pat Patterson, Warren Reynolds) subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses (Domingo Benavides, William Arthur Smith) testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness (L.J. Lewis) felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. Warren Commission Hearings, CE 1968, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225192742/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0425a.htm |date=February 25, 2021 }}.</ref> Four cartridge cases found at the scene were identified by expert witnesses<ref name="Cunn-Nicol" /> before the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee as having been fired from the revolver later found in Oswald's possession, excluding all other weapons. The bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be positively identified as having been fired from Oswald's revolver, as the bullets were too extensively damaged to make conclusive assessments.<ref name=Cunn-Nicol>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, pp. 466–473, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605011740/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0237b.htm |date=June 5, 2011 }}. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 511, .</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725112610/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol7/html/HSCA_Vol7_0193b.htm |date=July 25, 2018 }}, 7 HSCA 376.</ref> | |||
He has also been portrayed in various novels, such as '']'' by ] and ''The Two Faces of Lee Harvey Oswald'' by Glenn B. Fleming. | |||
=== Arrest at the Texas Theatre === | |||
One of ]' favourite routines in his stand-up sets was to talk at length about the Kennedy Assassination, one such riff detailing how he thought that the Assassination Museum set up to look exactly as it did on the day of the assassination was indeed incredibly accurate; "Because Oswald's not in it. Incredible...painstaking detail. I don't know who did the research, but I applaud them." | |||
Shoe store manager Johnny Brewer testified that he saw Oswald "ducking into" the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip without paying into the nearby ], where the film '']'' was playing.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111130615/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0006a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 7 H 3–5.</ref> He alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned police,<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111170509/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0010a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 7 H 11.</ref> at about 1:40 p.m. As police arrived, the ] were brought up and Brewer pointed out Oswald sitting near the rear of the theater. Police Officer Nick McDonald testified that he was the first to reach Oswald and that Oswald seemed ready to surrender saying, "Well, it is all over now." McDonald said that Oswald pulled out a pistol tucked into the front of his pants, then pointed the pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. McDonald stated that the pistol did not fire because the pistol's hammer came down on the webbing between the thumb and index finger of his hand as he grabbed for the pistol. McDonald also said that Oswald struck him, but that he struck back and Oswald was disarmed.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928104030/http://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol3/page295.php |date=September 28, 2011 }}.</ref><ref>{{YouTube|mv5vemBcjok}}. Brewer and McDonald testify on film to a reporter at the sites of the shoe store and inside the Texas Theater.</ref> As he was led from the theater, Oswald shouted he was a victim of ].<ref name="arrest-by-mcdonald"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111215064320/http://www.jfk-online.com/mcdonald.html |date=December 15, 2011 }}. Retrieved June 21, 2011.</ref> | |||
Oswald was formally arraigned for the murder of Officer Tippit at 7:10 p.m.<ref name="WCR-C5">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=198 |chapter=Chapter 5: Detention and Death of Oswald |chapter-url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-5.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 5|1964}} |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408112649/https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Tippit murder affidavit: {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629191109/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0170a.htm |date=June 29, 2011 }}, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629191350/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0170b.htm |date=June 29, 2011 }}.</ref> Soon after his arrest, Oswald encountered reporters in a hallway. Oswald declared, "I didn't shoot anybody" and, "They've taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!"<ref name="Bugliosi2007b">Bugliosi, ''Reclaiming History'', pp. 841–42.</ref> Later, at an arranged press meeting, a reporter asked, "Did you kill the President?" and Oswald – who by that time had been advised of the charge of murdering Tippit, but had not yet been arraigned in Kennedy's death – <!--advised, booked, arraigned – can someone clear all this up? -->answered, "No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/oswald/|title=Oswald's Ghost {{!}} American Experience {{!}} PBS|website=www.pbs.org|language=en|access-date=May 10, 2018|archive-date=May 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180510115444/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/oswald/|url-status=live}}</ref> As he was led from the room the question was called out, "What did you do in Russia?" and, "How did you hurt your eye?"; Oswald answered, "A policeman hit me."<ref name="WCR-C5" /> By early the next morning (shortly after 1:30 a.m.) he had been arraigned for the assassination of President Kennedy.<ref>Kennedy murder affidavit: {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120229134730/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0171a.htm |date=February 29, 2012 }}, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190627033327/https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0170a.htm |date=June 27, 2019 }}.</ref> | |||
Another novel featuring Oswald and speculation on the ] theory is 1975's '']'' by ] and ]. | |||
== Police interrogation == | |||
In the 1973 movie '']'', actual archival footage of Oswald is used, while an Oswald "double" in the film is played by James Mac Coll. | |||
shows "A. J. Hidell" as alternate name on Oswald New Orleans P.O. Box</ref> Both the alleged murder weapon and the pistol in Oswald's possession at arrest had earlier been shipped (at separate times) to Oswald's Dallas P.O. Box 2915, as ordered by "A. J. Hidell".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0073a.htm|title=Assassination Archive and Research Center}}</ref>]] | |||
Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days at Dallas Police Headquarters. He admitted that he went to his rooming house after leaving the book depository. He also admitted that he changed his clothes and armed himself with a ] revolver before leaving his house to go to the theater.<ref>Summers, Anthony. ''Not in Your Lifetime'', (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), p. 66. {{ISBN|1-56924-739-0}}</ref> Oswald denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, denied owning a rifle, and said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes. He denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment (he said that the package contained his lunch). He also denied carrying a long, bulky package to work the morning of the assassination. Oswald denied knowing an "A. J. Hidell". Oswald was then shown a forged ] card bearing his photograph and the alias, "Alek James Hidell" that he had in his possession at the time of his arrest. Oswald refused to answer any questions concerning the card, saying "you have the card yourself and you know as much about it as I do".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|pp=180–182}}<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111230015238/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/wc/contents_wh17.htm |date=December 30, 2011 }} with facsimile of card (CE 795) with Commission notation: "A spurious Selective Service System notice of classification card in the name "Alek James Hidell". See {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120229134824/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0354a.htm |date=February 29, 2012 }} (illustrated at right)</ref> | |||
In the 1977 movie '']'' John Pleshette plays Oswald in a fictional dramatization of the trial that never happened. | |||
FBI Special Agent ] and Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz (chief of homicide) conducted the first interrogation of Oswald on Friday, November 22. When Oswald was asked to account for himself at the time of the assassination, he replied that he was eating his lunch in the first-floor lounge (known as the "domino room"). He said that he then went to the second-floor lunchroom to buy a Coca-Cola from the soda machine there and was drinking it when he encountered Dallas motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker, who had entered the building with his gun drawn.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 4, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111164757/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh4/html/WC_Vol4_0238a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, pp. 467–468</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165248/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh4/html/WC_Vol4_0111a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, pp. 213–214 Commission Exhibit 2003</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111130619/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0142a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, "Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald", vol. 4, p. 265.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165934/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0312b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, Warren Report, appendix 11, p. 600.</ref> Oswald said that while he was in the domino room, he saw two "Negro employees" walking by, one he recognized as "Junior" and a shorter man whose name he could not recall.<ref>{{cite web|title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy|url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html|publisher=]|access-date=February 5, 2013|archive-date=June 28, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628191606/http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Junior Jarman and Harold Norman confirmed to the Warren Commission that they had "walked through" the domino room around noon during their lunch break. When asked if anyone else was in the domino room, Norman testified that somebody else was there, but he could not remember who it was. Jarman testified that Oswald was not in the domino room when he was there.<ref name="History Matters Archive">{{cite web|title=Warren Commission Hearings, Volume III|url=http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0105a.htm|publisher=History Matters Archive|access-date=February 5, 2013|archive-date=January 9, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130109084351/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0105a.htm|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Summers 1998, p. 59.</ref> | |||
In ]'s 1977 film '']'', Woody's character of Alvy Singer obsesses over the JFK assassination, unable to believe the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone. His wife Allison (Carol Kane), accuses him of using his 'conspiracy theory' as "an excuse to avoid sex with me". | |||
When homicide detective ] testified before the Warren Commission, he said that the first time he had ever sat in on an interrogation with Oswald was on Sunday morning, November 24, 1963. When Counsel Joseph Ball asked Leavelle if he had ever spoken to Oswald before this interrogation, he stated, "No, I had never talked to him before". Leavelle then stated during his testimony that "the only time I had connections with Oswald was this Sunday morning . I never had occasion... to talk with him at any time..."<ref name="WCH-VII">{{cite book |title=Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Volume VII |url=http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=1&tab=page |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=260–270 |chapter=Testimony of James R. Levelle |chapter-url=http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=270&tab=page |ref={{harvid|Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Volume VIII|1964}} |access-date=August 23, 2021 |archive-date=July 17, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210717063514/https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=1&tab=page |url-status=live }}</ref> During Oswald's last interrogation on November 24, according to postal inspector Harry Holmes, Oswald was again asked where he was at the time of the shooting. Holmes (who attended the interrogation at the invitation of Captain Will Fritz) said that Oswald replied that he was working on an upper floor when the shooting occurred, then went downstairs where he encountered Dallas motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111164704/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0153a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, pp. 297–302.</ref> | |||
] mystery novel, '']'', featured the antagonist mimicking Oswald's actions the day of the assassination exactly. | |||
Oswald asked for legal representation several times during the interrogation, and he also asked for assistance during encounters with reporters. When ], President of the ], met with him in his cell on Saturday, he declined their services, saying he wanted to be represented by ], chief counsel to the ], or by lawyers associated with the ].<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111170513/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0168b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 7 H 328–329.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165705/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0154a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 7 H 299–300.</ref> Both Oswald and Ruth Paine tried to reach Abt by telephone several times Saturday and Sunday,<ref>Jesse E. Curry, '''', Self-published, 1969, p. 74, affidavit of Dallas police officer Thurber T. Lord on August 20, 1964.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165628/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0048b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 3 H 88–89.</ref> but Abt was away for the weekend.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111170055/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh10/html/WC_Vol10_0062b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 10 H 116.</ref> Oswald also declined his brother Robert's offer on Saturday to obtain a local attorney.<ref>Robert L. Oswald, '''', Coward–McCann, 1967, p. 145.</ref> | |||
In '']'' (1987) Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's dictated version of events allows room only for Oswald, who fires three rounds. | |||
During an interrogation with Captain Fritz, when asked, "Are you a communist?", he replied, "No, I am not a communist. I am a Marxist."<ref>] (2008) pp. 416–7, quote: "No, I am not a Communist", Oswald says. "I am a Marxist, but not a Marxist-Leninist. ... "Well, a Communist is a Leninist-Marxist", Oswald explains, "while I am a true Karl Marxist. I've read just about everything by or about Karl Marx."</ref><ref>Smith, Jeffrey K. (2008) ''Rendezvous in Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy'' pp. 239–40, quote: No, I am not a Communist. I am a Marxist, but not a Marxist-Leninist. ... Well, a Communist is a Leninist-Marxist, while I am a true Karl Marxist. I've read just about everything by or about Karl Marx.</ref><ref>Kelley Exhibit A, 20 H 443; CE 2064, 24 H 490; 7 H 298, WCT Harry D. Holmes</ref> | |||
In the ] ] series '']'', Oswald is knocked out of the window by the arrival of the ''Red Dwarf'' crew before he can fire his third shot. Having seen the ] future their actions have caused, the crew attempt to set history back on course by sending Oswald up to the top floor so their past selves cannot interfere, but at this higher vantage, the trajectory is so steep that Oswald's shot goes wide and ] is changed. With no other recourse, and with none of the crew willing to kill Kennedy, the crew recruit an alternative John F. Kennedy from the future (In the new timeline Kennedy was arrested in 1965 for sharing a mistress with a Mafia boss) to shoot "himself" from behind the Grassy Knoll. The ] ] claims that not only will these actions restore the original timeline, but they will also "drive the ] crazy". | |||
== Murder == | |||
In the 5th season of the show '']'', the character of ] "leaps" into the body of Oswald, days before he's supposed to shoot Kennedy. He leaps into Oswald while posing for the photo of himself holding a rifle, taken by his wife. He leaped back out again just prior to the actual assassination shots and into ] agent Clint Hill running alongside the limo. Had he not leaped, Oswald would have also killed ]. In the episode, Oswald was played by ] who also played the part in the movie ''Ruby''. The show's creator, ], served in the US Marine Corps with Oswald and the episode recreated a meeting between the two. | |||
{{Infobox civilian attack | |||
| title = Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald | |||
| image = Ruby shoots Oswald.jpg | |||
| caption = Ruby shooting Oswald, who is being escorted by Dallas police. Detective ] is wearing the tan suit. | |||
| date = {{start date and age|1963|11|24}} | |||
| time = 11:21 ] | |||
| timezone = ] | |||
| location = ], Texas, U.S. | |||
| coordinates = | |||
| type = ] by ] | |||
| motive = Disputed | |||
| target = Lee Harvey Oswald | |||
| weapon = ] ] | |||
| fatalities = 1 (Lee Harvey Oswald) | |||
| perpetrator = ] | |||
| victim = | |||
| verdict = ] | |||
| convictions = ] with ] | |||
{{Infobox event | |||
| title = <br /> | |||
| child = yes | |||
| sentence = ] (overturned) | |||
}} | |||
}} | |||
On Sunday, November 24, detectives were escorting Oswald through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters toward an armored car that was to take him from the city jail (located on the fourth floor of police headquarters) to the nearby county jail. At 11:21 a.m. CST, Dallas nightclub operator ] approached Oswald from the side of the crowd and shot him once in the ] at close range.<ref name="autopsy">{{cite web|last=Rose|first=Earl F.|date=November 24, 1963|url=https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337234/|url-status=dead|title=Autopsy Report for Lee Harvey Oswald, by Earl F. Rose|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221008014818/https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337234/ |archive-date=October 8, 2022 |access-date=October 7, 2022|postscript=. It is a legal document at the University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History<!--https://web.archive.org/web/20221008014816/https://texashistory.unt.edu/--->, crediting Dallas Municipal Archives.}}</ref> As the shot rang out, a police detective recognized Ruby and exclaimed: "Jack, you son of a bitch!"<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://politics.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1124.html|title=President's Assassin Shot To Death In Jail Corridor By A Dallas Citizen; Grieving Throngs View Kennedy Bier|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=May 12, 2018|archive-date=March 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180321193032/http://politics.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1124.html|url-status=live}}</ref> The crowd outside the headquarters applauded when they heard that Oswald had been shot.<ref>{{harvnb|Posner|1993|page=399}}</ref> | |||
In ]'s 1991 film '']'', which dramatizes the investigation of JFK's assassination, Oswald's character is played by ]. | |||
As Oswald ascended in the elevator to the basement, his last recorded words were "I want to see the American Civil Liberties Union".<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dl21EAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-4549-1269-9 | title=Lee Harvey Oswald: 48 Hours to Live: Oswald, Kennedy, and the Conspiracy that Will Not die | date=5 November 2013 | publisher=Union Square & Co.|page= }}</ref> When the shot rang out, Oswald screamed "Oh!" in pain and his hands clutched at his stomach as he moaned while slumping to the floor.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/05/archives/witness-ascribes-malice-to-ruby-quotes-him-as-saying-he-hopes.html|title=Witness ascribes malice to Ruby; Quotes Him as Saying He Hopes Oswald Would Die|work=The New York Times|date=March 5, 1964|access-date=November 20, 2023|archive-date=November 20, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231120212009/https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/05/archives/witness-ascribes-malice-to-ruby-quotes-him-as-saying-he-hopes.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |date=March 13, 1964 |title=Trials: Another Day in Dallas |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,828230-2,00.html |access-date=November 15, 2023 |magazine=Time |issn=0040-781X |archive-date=May 15, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230515174812/https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,828230-2,00.html |url-status=live }}</ref> While Ruby was subdued by police, Oswald was carried back into the basement level jail office. Detective Billy Combest asked Oswald, "Do you have anything you want to tell us now?" Oswald shook his head.<ref>{{cite journal| url= https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh12/html/WC_Vol12_0097b.htm| title= Testimony of Billy Combest| journal= Warren Commission Hearings| volume= 12| access-date= August 14, 2021| archive-date= August 14, 2021| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210814082035/https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh12/html/WC_Vol12_0097b.htm| url-status= live}}</ref>{{rp|184–185}} | |||
In ]'s novel '']'', the protagonist, upon finding himself reliving the month of November 1963, travels to Dallas and sends death threats to Kennedy, signed with Oswald's name, from Oswald's local post office. Oswald is arrested soon after; to the protagonist's surprise, Kennedy is still assassinated on the 22nd. | |||
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Oswald was placed in an ambulance and was driven to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead two days earlier. Frederick Bieberdorf, a medical student on duty who rode in the ambulance, said that—several blocks before reaching the hospital—Oswald started thrashing about, resisting Beiberdorf's efforts of heart massage and attempting to free an oxygen mask over his mouth.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0091b.htm|url-status=live|title=Bieberdorf Ex 5123 – Copy of an FBI report of an interview of Frederick A. Bieberdorf, dated December 6, 1963|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122201825/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0091b.htm |archive-date=January 22, 2022|journal=Warren Commission Hearings|volume= 19|page= 164 }}</ref> Oswald died at 1:07 p.m;<ref name="Saturday2" /> Dallas police chief ] announced his death on a TV news broadcast.<ref>{{cite AV media|author=HelmerReenberg|date=November 13, 2020|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7Ds5dNzWRw|title=November 24, 1963 – Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry announces the death of Lee Harvey Oswald|access-date=December 10, 2024|via=YouTube}}</ref> | |||
] played Oswald in the 1993 TV movie '']'', in which ] starred as Marina Oswald. Whaley had previously played the role of "Oswald Imposter" in Oliver Stone's ''JFK''. | |||
At 2:45 p.m. the same day, an autopsy was performed on Oswald in the Office of the County Medical Examiner.<ref name="autopsy" /> ] medical examiner ] announced the results of the ]: "The two things that we could determine were, first, that he died from a ] from a gunshot wound, and that otherwise he was a physically healthy male."<ref name="Pittsburgh Post-Gazette">{{cite news|title=Autopsy Shows Oswald Healthy; Little of History of Slayer Is Revealed|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mZ1RAAAAIBAJ&pg=1386%2C5383871|access-date=April 4, 2013|newspaper=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|date=November 30, 1963|agency=AP|location=Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania|page=f|archive-date=July 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715233908/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mZ1RAAAAIBAJ&pg=1386,5383871|url-status=live}}</ref> Rose's examination found that the bullet entered Oswald's left side in the front part of the abdomen and caused damage to his ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and eleventh ] before coming to rest on<!--reference states "on"--> his right side.<ref name="Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" /> | |||
In a 4th season episode of the show '']'', it is revealed that the ], then an Army Captain, killed Kennedy by shooting him from a storm drain on Elm Street as the President's motorcade was passing by. CSM was secretly ordered to do so by a vindictive army General who felt Kennedy had bungled the Bay of Pigs invasion by withholding air support for the invading fleet. CSM also arranged the situation in such a way as to frame Oswald. Also in the series, three characters print a newsletter that they call '']''. And in their short lived spin off series, a fellow hacker named Lois Runtz goes by several aliases that are all anagrams of Lee Harvey Oswald (the most frequently used being ].) | |||
A network television pool camera was broadcasting live to cover the transfer; millions of people watching on ] saw the shooting as it happened, and on other networks within minutes afterward.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Laurence Bergreen |last=Bergreen |first=Laurence |year=1980 |title=Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting |url=https://archive.org/details/looknowpaylaterr00berg |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Doubleday and Company |isbn=978-0-451-61966-2}}</ref> In 1964, ] of the '']'' was awarded the ] for his photograph taken immediately after the shot was fired, as Oswald began to double over in pain.<ref name="Fischer">{{cite book |last1=Fischer |first1=Heinz-D |last2=Fischer |first2=Erika J. |year=2003 |chapter=Prizes for Pictorial Journalism Areas |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w3CdrctE80IC&pg=PA206 |title=The Pulitzer Prize Archive: A History and Anthology of Award-Winning Materials in Journalism, Letters and Arts |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w3CdrctE80IC |volume=17 Complete Historical Handbook of the Pulitzer Prize System 1917–2000 |location=München |publisher=De Gruyter |page=206 |isbn=978-3-11-093912-5}}</ref> | |||
In the fourth season of the television series '']'', the goddess ] says that there was no conspiracy and that Oswald acted alone. In the fifth season, ] says that Kennedy had a deal with the evil law firm ] and tried to get out of it, and was killed as a result. | |||
=== Jack Ruby's motive === | |||
In the television series '']'', the JFK assassination was parodied having Oswald trying to warn Kennedy of the shooters in the grassy knoll. Then, revealing a rifle, he attempts to shoot them, not Kennedy, from the Depository building. | |||
Ruby later said he had been distraught over Kennedy's death and that his motive for killing Oswald was "saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial".<ref name="history-matters.com">{{cite journal|url=http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/html/WC_Vol5_0104b.htm|url-status=live|title= Testimony of Jack Ruby|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225211313/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/html/WC_Vol5_0104b.htm |archive-date=February 25, 2021 |journal=Warren Commission Hearings|volume=5|pages= 198–200}}</ref> Others have hypothesized that Ruby was part of a conspiracy. ], chief counsel for the ] from 1977 to 1979, said: "The most plausible explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight hours before he silenced him forever."<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0MeH1Z-Dd-QC&q=stalked&pg=PA71 |last=Goldfarb |first=Ronald |title=Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy's War Against Organized Crime |location=Virginia |publisher=Capital Books |year=1995 |page=281 |isbn=1-931868-06-9}}</ref> | |||
=== Burial === | |||
In episode 405 9F04 of th FOX cartoon "]" (Treehouse of Horror III), Bart realizes that the spell book he needs to reverse the animation of Springfield's dead as zombies is still in the library. Surrounded by flesh-eating zombies, Homer racks a round into the chamber of his shotgun and declares: "To the Book Depository!". | |||
] | |||
Miller Funeral Home had great difficulty finding a cemetery willing to accept Oswald's remains; Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth eventually agreed. A Lutheran minister reluctantly agreed to officiate but then failed to appear. Reverend Louis Saunders of the Fort Worth Council of Churches volunteered, saying that "someone had to help this family". He performed a brief graveside service under heavy guard on November 25. Reporters covering the burial were asked to act as pallbearers.<ref>Bugliosi, ''Reclaiming History'', pp. 314-318.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170714070835/http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/57162874-68/oswald-fort-lee-worth.html.csp |date=July 14, 2017 }} ''The Salt Lake Tribune'', November 21, 2013.</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111201920/http://jfkassassination.net/parnell/grave.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }} at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> | |||
Oswald's original tombstone, which gave his full name, birth date, and death date, was stolen four years after the assassination, and his mother replaced it with a marker simply inscribed ''Oswald''.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/the-long-strange-journey-of-lee-harvey-oswalds-tombstone-back-to-texas/|title=The Long, Strange Journey Of Lee Harvey Oswald's Gravestone Back To Texas|author=Dan Solomon|date=August 14, 2015|work=Texas Monthly|access-date=October 24, 2021|archive-date=October 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211024022227/https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/the-long-strange-journey-of-lee-harvey-oswalds-tombstone-back-to-texas/|url-status=live}}</ref> His mother's body was buried beside his in 1981.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/cron/ |title=Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? – A chronology of Lee Harvey Oswald's life |publisher=Pbs.org |access-date=September 17, 2010 |archive-date=September 29, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170929084222/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/cron/ |url-status=live }}</ref> A claim by ] in ''The Oswald File'' (1975) that a look-alike Russian agent was buried in place of Oswald led to the body's exhumation on October{{nbsp}}4, 1981.<ref>{{cite news |date=October 5, 1981 |title=Oswald's Body Is Exhumed; An Autopsy Affirms Identity |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/05/us/oswald-s-body-is-exhumed-an-autopsy-affirms-identity.html |access-date=December 10, 2024 |work=The New York Times |page=1 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref><ref name="The New York Times; January 30, 2015">{{cite news |last=Montgomery |first=David |date=January 30, 2015 |title=Oswald's Coffin Belongs to His Brother, Not Funeral Home, a Judge Rules |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/oswalds-coffin-belongs-to-his-brother-not-funeral-home-a-judge-rules.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220103/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/oswalds-coffin-belongs-to-his-brother-not-funeral-home-a-judge-rules.html |archive-date=January 3, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |newspaper=The New York Times |page=A15 |access-date=June 3, 2015}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Leclercq |first=Matt |date=September 13, 2024 |title=The day they dug up Lee Harvey Oswald in Fort Worth: 1981 photos seen for first time |url=https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article290625734.html |access-date=December 10, 2024 |work=Fort Worth Star-Telegram |issn=0889-0013}}</ref> Dental records confirmed it was Oswald. The remains were reburied in a new coffin because of water damage to the original.<ref name="The Times-Picayune; January 30, 2015">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Funeral home wrongly sold Lee Harvey Oswald's casket, judge rules |url=http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/01/funeral_home_wrongly_sold_lee.html |newspaper=The Times-Picayune |location=New Orleans |agency=AP |date=January 30, 2015 |access-date=June 3, 2015 |archive-date=June 28, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150628054451/http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/01/funeral_home_wrongly_sold_lee.html |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
==Trivia== | |||
Phil Bennison (Homer Henderson) wrote a song titled "Lee Harvey Was A Friend Of Mine," which has been covered by ], ] and ], among others. | |||
In 2010, Miller Funeral Home employed a Los Angeles auction house to sell the original mole-skin covered pine coffin to an anonymous bidder for $87,468.<ref name="The New York Times; January 30, 2015" /><ref name="The Times-Picayune; January 30, 2015" /> The sale was halted after Oswald's brother, Robert (1934{{ndash}}2017),<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/obituaries/article187524003.html|title=Robert Oswald, brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, dies at 83|website=star-telegram|access-date=December 16, 2018|archive-date=April 12, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412035049/https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/obituaries/article187524003.html|url-status=live}}</ref> sued to reclaim the coffin.<ref name="The New York Times; January 30, 2015" /><ref name="The Times-Picayune; January 30, 2015" /> In 2015, a district judge in ], ruled that the funeral home intentionally concealed the existence of the coffin from Robert Oswald, who had originally purchased it and believed that it had been discarded after the exhumation,<ref name="The New York Times; January 30, 2015" /><ref name="The Times-Picayune; January 30, 2015" /> and ordered it returned to Robert Oswald along with damages equal to the sale price.<ref name="The New York Times; January 30, 2015" /><ref name="The Times-Picayune; January 30, 2015" /> Robert Oswald's attorney stated that the coffin would likely be destroyed "as soon as possible".<ref name="The New York Times; January 30, 2015" /><ref name="The Times-Picayune; January 30, 2015" /> | |||
== Official investigations == | |||
On ], the character Oswald's full name is "Oswald Lee Harvey," an obvious pun. | |||
=== Warren Commission === | |||
Oswald's involvement in the ] is disputed in ] song ‘Sleeping In’: “Last week I had the strangest dream/where everything was exactly how it seemed/where there was never any mystery/of who shot John F. Kennedy/ It was just a man with something to prove/Slightly bored and severely confused he steadied his rifle with his target in the center/and became famous on that day in November/” | |||
President ] issued an ] that created the ] to investigate the assassination. The commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy, and the Warren Report could not ascribe any one motive or group of motives to Oswald's actions: | |||
{{blockquote|It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history – a role as the "great man" who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. He also had demonstrated a capacity to act decisively and without regard to the consequences when such action would further his aims of the moment. Out of these and the many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of assassinating President Kennedy.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 7|1964|pp=423–424}}}} | |||
]'s song "11 m.p.h." is about Oswald. The title refers to the speed President Kennedy's motorcade was moving. | |||
The proceedings of the commission were closed, though not secret. Approximately three percent of its files have yet to be released to the public, which has continued to provoke speculation among researchers.<ref group="n">"Two misconceptions about the Warren Commission hearing need to be clarified ... hearings were closed to the public unless the witness appearing before the Commission requested an open hearing. No witness except one ... requested an open hearing ... Second, although the hearings (except one) were conducted in private, they were not secret. In a secret hearing, the witness is instructed not to disclose his testimony to any third party, and the hearing testimony is not published for public consumption. The witnesses who appeared before the Commission were free to repeat what they said to anyone they pleased, and ''all'' of their testimony was subsequently published in the first fifteen volumes put out by the Warren Commission." (Bugliosi, p. 332)</ref> | |||
"Where is Lee Harvey Oswald now that we need him?" was a popular slogan on anti-war ] during the ] and ] administrations | |||
=== Ramsey Clark Panel === | |||
]'s song 'Before She Does' mentions Lee Harvey Oswald: "There's absolutely postively no doubt in my mind/ That O.J. did it, Lee Harvey didnt and she's really gone this time" | |||
In 1968, the ] examined various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence. It concluded that Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him: one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone, and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its right side.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070707125949/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clark.txt |date=July 7, 2007 }} (.txt) at ''Kennedy Assassination Home Page''</ref> | |||
=== House Select Committee === | |||
==References== | |||
{{Main|United States House Select Committee on Assassinations}} | |||
<div class="references-small"> | |||
{{Further|John F. Kennedy assassination Dictabelt recording}} | |||
<references/> | |||
</div> | |||
In 1979, after a review of the evidence and of prior investigations, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) largely concurred with the Warren Commission and was preparing to issue a finding that Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy.<ref name="Bugliosi, p. 376">Bugliosi, ''Reclaiming History'', p. 376</ref> Late in the Committee's proceedings, a ] recording was introduced, purportedly recording sounds heard in Dealey Plaza before, during, and after the shots. After an analysis by the firm ] appeared to indicate more than three gunshots, the HSCA revised its findings to assert a "high probability that two gunmen fired" at Kennedy and that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy". Although the Committee was "unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy", it made a number of further findings regarding the likelihood that particular groups, named in the findings, were involved.<ref name="autogenerated1"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210301001730/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0005a.htm |date=March 1, 2021 }} HSCA Final Report, p. 3.</ref> Four of the twelve members of the HSCA dissented from this conclusion.<ref name="Bugliosi, p. 376" /> | |||
==Further reading== | |||
* ], ''Khrushchev Killed Kennedy'', self-published, (1975), paperback (republished as ''Nov. 22, How They Killed Kennedy'', Neville Spearman (1976), hardback, ISBN 0859780198 and as ''The Oswald File'', Potter (1977), hardcover, ISBN 0517530554) | |||
* ], ''The Search of Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record'', New York: Penguin Studio Books, 1995. ISBN 0-67085867-6 | |||
* ], ''False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film'' JFK, New York: M. Evans & Company, 1998. | |||
* ], ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the. Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', Carroll & Graf Publishers, NYC, 1988, softcover, ISBN 0881844381 | |||
* ], ''Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery'', New York: Ballantine Books, (1995) ISBN 0-345-40437-8 | |||
* ], ''Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy,'' Carroll & Graf Publishers, NYC, 1990, ISBN 0881846481 | |||
* ], ''Marina And Lee'', New York: Haper & Row, 1977. | |||
* ], , , Milford, MI, 1998, ISBN 0-9662709-7-5 | |||
* ], ''Oswald and the CIA'', New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers,1995. ISBN 0-7867-0131-5 | |||
* ], ''Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him'', New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993. | |||
*], ''Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK'', Random House (1993), hardcover, ISBN 0679418253 | |||
* ], ''Conspiracy, Who killed president Kennedy'', Fontana (1980), | |||
* ], ''JFK: Say Goodbye to America'', Mainstream Publishing (2004) | |||
* ], ''Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald And U. S. Intelligence'', Praeger Publishing, (1990), ISBN 027593571X | |||
The acoustic evidence has since been discredited.<ref name="Bugliosi, p. 377">{{cite book|first=Vincent|last=Bugliosi|author-link=Vincent Bugliosi|title=Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7jrKTKDhvfkC|year=2007|publisher=W. W. Norton|isbn=978-0-393-04525-3|page=377}}</ref><ref name="Campbell2008">{{cite book|author=Ballard C. Campbell|title=Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation's Most Catastrophic Events|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VitlO1mWxzAC|access-date=September 1, 2013|year=2008|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-3012-5|page=1936}}</ref><ref name="ATY">{{cite journal | title=After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination | author=Holland, Max | journal=] |date=June 1994 | volume=22 | issue=2 | pages=191–209 | doi=10.2307/2702884| jstor=2702884 | issn=0048-7511 }}</ref><ref name="48 years">{{cite journal | title=The Assassination of John F. Kennedy – 48 Years On | author=Martin, John | journal=Irish Foreign Affairs |date=September 2011}}</ref><ref name="Knight2007">{{cite book|first=Peter|last=Knight|title=The Kennedy Assassination|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MRs2Tu714ZUC&pg=PA72|access-date=September 4, 2013|year=2007|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-934110-32-4|page=72}}</ref><ref name="Olmsted2011">{{cite book|author=Kathryn S. Olmsted|title=Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u7Sd5vyOOtEC&pg=PA170|access-date=September 4, 2013|date=March 11, 2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-975395-6|pages=169–170}}</ref> Officer H. B. McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came,<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165408/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol5/html/HSCA_Vol5_0311a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}, 5 HSCA 617.</ref><ref>G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, ''The Plot to Kill the President'', Times Books, 1981, p. 103. {{ISBN|978-0-8129-0929-6}}.</ref> has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination.<ref>Greg Jaynes, ''The Scene of the Crime'', {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112203801/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jaynes/mclain.htm |date=January 12, 2012 }}.</ref> McLain asked the Committee, "'If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?'"<ref>" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140819200454/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0261b.htm |date=August 19, 2014 }}", HSCA Report, pp. 492–493.</ref> <!-- I really don't want to get mired in this, but if Ofc. McLain was, as stated, not yet in D.P. at the time of the shots, why would he be part of the "we" who "immediately took off" for the hospital? Inquiring minds want to know!--> | |||
In 1982, a panel of twelve scientists appointed by the ] (NAS), including Nobel laureates ] and ], unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the shots, and did not indicate additional gunshots.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10264 |title=Report of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics |year=1982 |publisher=Nap.edu |doi=10.17226/10264 |isbn=978-0-309-25372-7 |access-date=December 24, 2012 |archive-date=December 6, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131206161858/http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10264 |url-status=live }}</ref> Their conclusions were published in the journal '']''.<ref>{{cite journal | title=Reexamination of Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination | author=Committee on Ballistic Acoustics, National Research Council | journal=Science |date=October 1982 | volume=218 | issue=8 | pages=127–133 | doi=10.1126/science.6750789}}</ref> In a 2001 article in the journal '']'', D. B. Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. He concluded with a 96.3 percent certainty that at least two gunmen fired at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll.<ref>Donald B. Thomas, , ''Science & Justice'', vol. 41(1), 2001, pp. 21–32. Retrieved April 10, 2010.</ref> In 2005, Thomas's conclusions were rebutted in the same journal. Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination.<ref>Linsker R., Garwin R.L., Chernoff H., Horowitz P., Ramsey N.F., {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131013231553/http://jfk-records.com/ScienceAndJustice_45%284%29_207-226%282005%29.pdf |date=October 13, 2013 }}. ''Science & Justice'', vol. 45(4), 2005, pp. 207–226.</ref> In 2010, D. B. Thomas challenged the 2005 ''Science & Justice'' article and restated his conclusion that there were at least two gunmen.<ref>{{cite book | title=Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination | author= Donald Byron Thomas | isbn=978-0-9801213-9-1| year=2010| publisher= Mary Ferrell Foundation Press }}</ref> | |||
==Backyard photos==<!-- perhaps this should be elsewhere, or a sub-article? --> | |||
==External links== | |||
{{Main|John F. Kennedy assassination rifle}} | |||
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Photos of Oswald holding the rifle that was later determined to be the murder weapon are an important piece of evidence linking Oswald to the crime. The photos were uncovered with other possessions belonging to Oswald in the garage of Ruth Paine in ], on November 23, 1963.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=181}} Marina Oswald told the Warren Commission that around March 31, 1963, she had taken pictures of Oswald as he posed with a Carcano rifle, a holstered pistol, and two Marxist newspapers – '']'' and '']''.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=125}} | |||
{{John F. Kennedy assassination}} | |||
Oswald had sent one of the photos to ''The Militant'''s New York office with an accompanying letter stating he was "prepared for anything": according to Sylvia Weinstein, who handled the newspaper's subscriptions at the time, Oswald was seen as "kookie" and politically "dumb and totally naive", as he apparently did not know that ''The Militant'', published by the Trotskyist ], and ''The Worker'', published by the pro-Soviet Communist Party USA, were rival publications and ideologically opposed to each other.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Russo |first1=Gus |title=Live by the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK |year=1998 |publisher=Bancroft Press |isbn=978-1-890862-01-5 |page=117 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7Q87Rrxyh9wC&q=oswald+militant+worker+%22socialist+workers+party%22&pg=PA117 |access-date=December 10, 2020 |language=en}}</ref> The pictures were shown to Oswald after his arrest, but he insisted that they were forgeries.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=181}} | |||
{{Persondata | |||
|NAME=Oswald, Lee Harvey | |||
In 1964, Marina testified before the Warren Commission that she had photographed Oswald, at his request and using his camera.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 1, p. 15, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165022/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh1/html/WC_Vol1_0014a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> These photos were labelled CE 133-A and CE 133-B. CE 133-A shows the rifle in Oswald's left hand and newspapers in front of his chest in the other, while the rifle is held with the right hand in CE 133-B. The Carcano in the images had markings matching those on the rifle found in the Book Depository after the assassination. Oswald's mother testified that on the day after the assassination she and Marina destroyed another photograph with Oswald holding the rifle with both hands over his head, with "To my daughter June" written on it.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 1, p. 146, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165727/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh1/html/WC_Vol1_0079b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> | |||
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES= | |||
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=Alleged assassin of President ] | |||
When shown one of the photos during his interrogation by Dallas police, Oswald stated that it was a fake. According to Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz: | |||
|DATE OF BIRTH=], ] | |||
<blockquote>He said that the picture was not his, that the face was his face, but that this picture had been made by someone superimposing his face, the other part of the picture was not him at all and that he had never seen the picture before. ... He told me that he understood photography real well, and that in time, he would be able to show that it was not his picture, and that it had been made by someone else.<ref name="WCR-A11">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=608–609 |chapter=Appendix 11: Reports Relating to the Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department |chapter-url=http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-11.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 11|1964}} |access-date=August 16, 2006 |archive-date=July 18, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060718205418/http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |url-status=live }}</ref></blockquote> | |||
|PLACE OF BIRTH=], ] | |||
|DATE OF DEATH=], ] | |||
The ] obtained another first-generation print (from CE 133-A) on April 1, 1977, from the widow of ]. The words "Hunter of fascists – ha ha ha!" written in block Russian were on the back. Also in English were added in script: "To my friend George, Lee Oswald, 5/IV/63 ."<ref>HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 6, p. 151, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111165842/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0079a.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}.</ref> Handwriting experts for the HSCA concluded the English inscription and signature were by Oswald. After two original photos, one negative and one first-generation copy had been found, the Senate Intelligence Committee located (in 1976) a third backyard photo (CE 133-C) showing Oswald with newspapers held away from his body in his right hand. | |||
|PLACE OF DEATH=], ] | |||
}} | |||
These photos, widely recognized as some of the most significant evidence against Oswald, have been subjected to rigorous analysis.<ref>HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 6, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111170305/http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0072b.htm |date=January 11, 2012 }}</ref> Photographic experts consulted by the HSCA concluded they were genuine,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/photos.txt |title=Photos |access-date=February 27, 2009 |archive-date=February 5, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205182046/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/photos.txt |url-status=live }}</ref> answering twenty-one points raised by critics.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/photos.txt |title=United States House Select Committee on Assassinations Report Chapter VI |access-date=February 27, 2009 |archive-date=February 5, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205182046/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/photos.txt |url-status=live }}</ref> Marina Oswald has always maintained she took the photos herself, and the 1963 de Mohrenschildt print bearing Oswald's signature clearly indicate they existed before the assassination. Nonetheless, some continue to contest their authenticity.<ref>], Hearings, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111223074437/http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/hscawhte.htm |date=December 23, 2011 }}.</ref> In 2009, after digitally analyzing the photograph of Oswald holding the rifle and paper, computer scientist ] concluded that the photo "almost certainly was not altered".<ref>{{cite journal | doi=10.1068/p6580 | journal=Perception | author=Farid, H | year=2009 | title=The Lee Harvey Oswald backyard photos: real or fake? | pages=1731–1734 | volume=38 | issue=11 | url=http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p6580 | pmid=20120271 | s2cid=12062689 | access-date=December 8, 2009 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101010224459/http://perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p6580 | archive-date=October 10, 2010 | url-status=dead | df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2009/11/05.html |title=Dartmouth Professor finds that iconic Oswald photo was not faked. |date=November 5, 2009 |access-date=November 14, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118190307/http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2009/11/05.html |archive-date=January 18, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> | |||
== Other investigations and dissenting theories == | |||
{{Main|John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories}} <!-- if this section remains "other investigations and dissenting theories", isn't there a slight overspecialization in this link – in other words, are all dissenting theories "conspiracy" theories? And didn't HSCA endorse "dissenting theories"? So shouldn't it be here instead of under "official"? But it was official, wasn't it, so therefore it belongs in the other section?--> | |||
Some critics have not accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission and have proposed several other theories, such as that Oswald conspired with others, or was not involved at all and was ].<!--a good summary of dissenting theories is needed here, though note there is a separate article ("see also") to carry most of that load --> A ] taken in mid-November 2013, showed 61% believed that Kennedy was killed as a result of conspiracy, and only 30% thought Oswald acted alone.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx |title=Majority in U.S. Still Believe JFK Killed in a Conspiracy: Mafia, federal government top list of potential conspirators |publisher=Gallup, Inc. |date=November 15, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160801184321/http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx |archive-date=August 1, 2016 }}</ref> Oswald was never prosecuted because he was murdered two days after the assassination. In March 1967, New Orleans District Attorney ] arrested and charged New Orleans businessman ] with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of Oswald, ], and others. Garrison believed that the men were part of an arms smuggling ring supplying weapons to the anti-Castro Cubans in a conspiracy with elements of the CIA to kill Kennedy.<ref name="TrailAssassins">{{cite book| author = Jim Garrison| title = On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=vtt3AAAAMAAJ| date = November 1988| publisher = Sheridan Square Pubns| isbn = 978-0-941781-02-2| page = 40 }}</ref> The ] began in January 1969 in Orleans Parish Criminal Court. The jury acquitted Shaw.<ref>{{cite web |last=Folkart |first=Burt A. |date=October 22, 1992 |title=Jim Garrison; D.A. Challenged JFK Assassination Report |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-10-22-mn-954-story.html |website=Los Angeles Times |access-date=December 7, 2024}}</ref> | |||
Several films have fictionalized a trial of Oswald, depicting what may have happened had Ruby not killed Oswald, including '']'' (1964),<ref>{{cite news |date=February 10, 1964 |title=A Movie Is Made of Oswald 'Trial'; Film of 'Court Proceedings' Completed on Dallas Sites |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/10/archives/a-movie-is-made-of-oswald-trial-film-of-court-proceedings-completed.html |access-date=December 7, 2024 |work=The New York Times |page=21}}</ref> '']'' (1977),<ref>{{cite news |last=Shales |first=Tom |date=September 30, 1977 |title='The (Tasteless) Trial of Oswald' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/09/30/the-tasteless-trial-of-oswald/18ba1eb5-e6c2-4efa-91d7-a5bbbf6219ed/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241212110329/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/09/30/the-tasteless-trial-of-oswald/18ba1eb5-e6c2-4efa-91d7-a5bbbf6219ed/ |archive-date=December 12, 2024 |access-date=December 7, 2024 |work=The Washington Post |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref> and ''On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald'' (1986).<ref>{{cite news |last=Corry |first=John |date=November 20, 1986 |title=TV Review; Showtime Stages 'Trial' of Lee Harvey Oswald |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/20/arts/tv-review-showtime-stages-trial-of-lee-harvey-oswald.html |access-date=December 7, 2024 |work=The New York Times |page=29}}</ref><ref name="Wecht & Kaufmann 2021, pp. 246–247">{{cite book |last1=Cyril H. |first1= Wecht |last2=Kaufmann |first2=Dawna|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_JFK_Assassination_Dissected/dfhPEAAAQBAJ |title=The JFK Assassination Dissected: An Analysis by Forensic Pathologist Cyril Wecht |location=Jefferson, North Carolina|publisher=McFarland & Company |year=<!--November 22,-->2021 |isbn=978-1-4766-8511-3 |pages=–}}</ref> The 1986 docu-trial was a 21-hour unscripted mock trial on television, argued by lawyers before a <!--I'd like to say "sitting" or "retired" judge, but I don't know which it is--> judge,<ref>Bugliosi, ''Reclaiming History''</ref>{{page needed|date=December 2024}} with unscripted testimony from surviving witnesses to the events surrounding the assassination; it was aired again in 1988 including additional courtroom footage not included in the original 1986 Showtime/MPI version. The jury returned a verdict of guilty and inspired ], who in 2005 described the 1986 mock trial as "the closest thing to a trial that Lee Harvey Oswald ever had or will have to write", to write his "Oswald acted alone" ''magnum opus'' '']'' (2007).<ref name="Wecht & Kaufmann 2021, pp. 246–247"/> In 1992, the ] conducted two mock Oswald trials: the first trial ended in a hung jury, while the second trial saw the jury acquitting Oswald.<ref>{{cite web |date=August 12, 1992 |title=Mock Trial Jury Splits on Oswald's Guilt in Assassination |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-12-me-5296-story.html |access-date=December 7, 2024 |website=Los Angeles Times}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Cleek |first=Ashley |date=June 2, 2015 |title=Oswald is Still Dead |url=https://www.lifeofthelaw.org/2015/06/oswald-is-still-dead/ |access-date=December 7, 2024 |website=Life of the Law}}</ref> | |||
== See also == | |||
* ], assassin of President ] | |||
* ], assassin of President ] | |||
* ], assassin of President ] | |||
* ], assassin of ] | |||
{{Clear}} | |||
== Notes == | |||
{{Reflist|group="n"|30em}} | |||
<references group="nb" /> | |||
== References == | |||
{{reflist}} | |||
==Sources== | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authorlink=Norman Mailer |year=2007 |orig-date=1995 |title=Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WSKKEJXZs_oC|publisher=Random House |isbn=9781588365934 }} | |||
* {{citation|last=Posner|first=Gerald|title=Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK|publisher=Random House|year=1993|isbn=0-679-41825-3|author-link=Gerald Posner}} | |||
* {{citation|author-link=Anthony Summers|last=Summers|first=Anthony|title=Not in Your Lifetime|location=New York|publisher=Marlowe & Company|year=1998|isbn=1-56924-739-0}} | |||
== Further reading == | |||
* {{cite book|last=Bugliosi|first=Vincent|title=Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy|publisher=Norton|year=2007|isbn=978-0-393-04525-3|author-link=Vincent Bugliosi}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Epstein|first=Edward Jay|title=Legend: the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald|location=New York|publisher=McGraw-Hill Book Company|year=1978|isbn=0-07-019539-0}} | |||
* {{cite book|author-link=Gerald Ford|last=Ford|first=Gerald|title=Portrait of the Assassin|location=New York|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=1965|isbn=0-684-82663-1}} | |||
* Gillon, Steven. ''Lee Harvey Oswald: 48 Hours to Live'' Sterling. 2013. {{ISBN|1454912510}}. | |||
* McMillan, Priscilla Johnson. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170328200356/https://www.amazon.com/Marina-Lee-Priscilla-Johnson-McMillan/dp/B000O613EW |date=March 28, 2017 }} New York: Harper & Row, 1977. | |||
* Melanson, Philip H. ''Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence''. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990, hardcover, {{ISBN|0-275-93571-X}}. | |||
* Nechiporenko, Oleg M. ''Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him''. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993, {{ISBN|1-55972-210-X}}. | |||
* Roffman, Howard. ''Presumed Guilty''. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1976, hardcover, {{ISBN|0-498-01933-0}}. | |||
* {{cite book|last=Sauvage|first=Leo|title=The Oswald Affair|location=Cleveland and New York|publisher=The World Publishing Company|year=1966}}{{ISBN?}} | |||
== External links == | |||
{{Link FA|he}} | |||
{{Commons|Lee Harvey Oswald}} | |||
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110623071243/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/ |date=June 23, 2011 }} | |||
* | |||
* by John C. McAdams | |||
* by W. Tracy Parnell | |||
* {{cite journal|pmc = 1806829|year = 1967|last1 = Abrahamsen|first1 = D.|title = A Study of Lee Harvey Oswald: Psychological Capability of Murder|journal = Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine|volume = 43|issue = 10|pages = 861–888|pmid = 19312773}} | |||
* {{IMDb name|652640}} | |||
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Latest revision as of 11:01, 15 December 2024
Assassin of John F. Kennedy (1939–1963) "Kennedy's assassin" redirects here. For the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, see Sirhan Sirhan.
Lee Harvey Oswald | |
---|---|
Oswald on November 23, 1963, one day after the assassination of Kennedy | |
Born | (1939-10-18)October 18, 1939 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
Died | November 24, 1963(1963-11-24) (aged 24) Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
Cause of death | Gunshot wound |
Resting place | Rose Hill Cemetery, Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. 32°43′57″N 97°12′12″W / 32.732455°N 97.203223°W / 32.732455; -97.203223 (Burial site of Lee Harvey Oswald) |
Known for | Assassination of John F. Kennedy and murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit |
Criminal charge | Murder with malice (2 counts) |
Spouse |
Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova
(m. 1961) |
Children | 2 |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United States |
Service | United States Marine Corps |
Years of service | 1956–1959 |
Rank | Private first class (demoted to private) |
Signature | |
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 for truancy, during which time he was assessed by a psychiatrist as "emotionally disturbed" due to a lack of normal family life. He attended 12 schools in his youth, quitting repeatedly, and at the age of 17 he joined the Marines, where he was court-martialed twice and jailed. In 1959, he was discharged from active duty into the Marine Corps Reserve, then flew to Europe and defected to the Soviet Union. He lived in Minsk, married a Russian woman named Marina, and had a daughter. In June 1962, he returned to the United States with his wife, and eventually settled in Dallas, Texas, where their second daughter was born.
Oswald shot and killed Kennedy on November 22, 1963, from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository as Kennedy traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. About 45 minutes after assassinating Kennedy, Oswald shot and killed Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on a local street. He then slipped into a movie theater, where he was arrested for Tippit's murder. Oswald was charged with the assassination of Kennedy, but he denied responsibility for the killing, claiming that he was a "patsy" (a fall guy). Two days later, Oswald was fatally shot by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone when assassinating Kennedy. This conclusion, though controversial, was supported by investigations from the Dallas Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Secret Service, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Despite forensic, ballistic, and eyewitness accounts supporting the official findings, public opinion polls have shown that most Americans still do not believe that the official version tells the whole truth of the events, and the assassination spawned numerous conspiracy theories.
Early life
Oswald was born at the old French Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939, to a MetLife worker Robert Edward Lee Oswald Sr. (1896–1939) and a legal clerk Marguerite Frances Claverie (1907–1981). Robert Oswald was a third cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War I. Robert died of a heart attack two months before Lee was born. Lee's elder brother Robert Jr. (1934–2017) was a U.S. Marine during the Korean War. Through Marguerite's first marriage to Edward John Pic Jr., Lee and Robert Jr. were the half-brothers of U.S. Air Force veteran John Edward Pic (1932–2000).
In 1944, Marguerite moved the family from New Orleans to Dallas, Texas. Oswald entered the first grade in 1945 and over the next six years attended several different schools in the Fort Worth areas through the sixth grade. Oswald took an IQ test in the fourth grade and scored 103, and "on achievement tests in , he twice did best in reading and twice did worst in spelling".
As a child, Oswald was described as withdrawn and temperamental by several people who knew him. When Oswald was 12 in August 1952, his mother took him to New York City where they lived for a short time with Oswald's half-brother, John. Oswald and his mother were later asked to leave after an argument in which Oswald allegedly struck his mother and threatened John's wife with a pocket knife.
Oswald attended seventh grade in the Bronx, New York, but was often truant, which led to a psychiatric assessment at a juvenile reformatory. The reformatory psychiatrist, Dr. Renatus Hartogs, described Oswald as immersed in a "vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations". Hartogs concluded:
Lee has to be diagnosed as "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies". Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self involved and conflicted mother.
Hartogs recommended that Lee be placed on probation on condition that he seek help and guidance through a child guidance clinic, and that Oswald seek "psychotherapeutic guidance through contact with a family agency". Evelyn D. Siegel, a social worker who interviewed both Lee and Marguerite Oswald at Youth House, while describing "a rather pleasant, appealing quality about this emotionally starved, affectionless youngster which grows as one speaks to him", found that he had detached himself from the world around him because "no one in it ever met any of his needs for love". Hartogs and Siegel indicated that Marguerite gave him very little affection, with Siegel concluding that Lee "just felt that his mother never gave a damn for him. He always felt like a burden that she simply just had to tolerate." Furthermore, his mother did not apparently indicate an awareness of the relationship between her conduct and her son's psychological problems, with Siegel describing Marguerite as a "defensive, rigid, self-involved person who had real difficulty in accepting and relating to people" and who had "little understanding" of Lee's behavior and of the "protective shell he has drawn around himself". Hartogs reported that she did not understand that Lee's withdrawal was a form of "violent but silent protest against his neglect by her and represents his reaction to a complete absence of any real family life".
When Oswald returned to school for the 1953 Fall semester, his disciplinary problems continued. When he failed to cooperate with school authorities, they sought a court order to remove him from his mother's care so he could be placed into a home for boys to complete his education. This was postponed, perhaps partially because his behavior abruptly improved. Before the New York family court system could address their case, the Oswalds left New York in January 1954, and returned to New Orleans.
Oswald completed the eighth and ninth grades in New Orleans. He entered the tenth grade in 1955 but quit school after one month. After leaving school, Oswald worked for several months as an office clerk and messenger in New Orleans. In July 1956, Oswald's mother moved the family to Fort Worth, Texas, and Oswald re-enrolled in the tenth grade for the September session at Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth. A few weeks later in October, Oswald quit school at age 17 to join the Marines; he never earned a high school diploma. By this point, he had resided at 22 locations and attended 12 schools.
Though Oswald had trouble spelling in his youth and may have had a "reading-spelling disability", he read voraciously. By age 15, he considered himself a socialist. According to his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries." At 16, he wrote to the Socialist Party of America for information on their Young People's Socialist League, saying he had been studying socialist principles for "well over fifteen months". Edward Voebel, "whom the Warren Commission had established was Oswald's closest friend during his teenage years in New Orleans", said "reports that Oswald was already 'studying Communism' were a 'lot of baloney.'" Voebel said that "Oswald commonly read 'paperback trash'".
As a teenager in 1955, Oswald became a cadet member of Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans. Fellow cadets variously recalled him attending CAP meetings "three or four" times, or "10 or 12 times", over a one- to three-month period.
Marine Corps
Oswald enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on October 24, 1956, just a week after his seventeenth birthday; because of his age, his brother Robert Jr. was required to sign as his legal guardian. Oswald also named his mother and his half-brother John as beneficiaries. Oswald idolized his older brother Robert Jr., and wore his Marine Corps ring. John Pic (Oswald's half-brother) testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald's enlistment was motivated by wanting "to get from out and under ... the yoke of oppression from my mother".
Oswald's enlistment papers recite that he was 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters) tall and weighed 135 pounds (61 kg), with hazel eyes and brown hair. His primary training was in radar operation, which required a security clearance. A May 1957 document stated that he was "granted final clearance to handle classified matter up to and including confidential after careful check of local records had disclosed no derogatory data".
At Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, Oswald finished seventh in a class of thirty in the Aircraft Control and Warning Operator Course, which "included instruction in aircraft surveillance and the use of radar". He was given the military occupational specialty of Aviation Electronics Operator. On July 9, he reported to the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in California. There he met fellow Marine Kerry Thornley, who co-created Discordianism. Thornley wrote the 1962 fictional book The Idle Warriors based on Oswald. This was the only book written about Oswald before the Kennedy assassination. Oswald departed for Japan the following month, where he was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1 at Naval Air Facility Atsugi near Tokyo.
Like all Marines, Oswald was trained and tested in shooting. In December 1956, he scored 212, which was slightly above the requirements for the designation of sharpshooter. In May 1959, he scored 191, which reduced his rating to marksman. Oswald was court-martialed after he accidentally shot himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 caliber handgun. He was court-martialed a second time for fighting with the sergeant he thought was responsible for his punishment in the shooting matter. He was demoted from private first class to private and briefly imprisoned. Oswald was later punished for a third incident: while he was on a night-time sentry duty in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.
Slightly built, Oswald was nicknamed Ozzie Rabbit after the cartoon character; due to his pro-Soviet sentiments, he was also called Oswaldskovich. In November 1958, Oswald transferred back to El Toro where his unit's function "was to serveil [sic] for aircraft, but basically to train both enlisted men and officers for later assignment overseas". An officer there said that Oswald was a "very competent" crew chief and was "brighter than most people".
While Oswald was in the Marines, he taught himself rudimentary Russian. Although this was an unusual endeavor, on February 25, 1959, he was invited to take a Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken Russian. His level at the time was rated "poor" in understanding spoken Russian, though he fared rather reasonably for a Marine private at the time in reading and writing. On September 11, 1959, he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his mother needed care. He was placed on the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
Defection to the Soviet Union
Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union just before he turned 20 in October 1959. He had taught himself Russian and saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary (equivalent to $12,500 in 2023). Oswald spent two days with his mother in Fort Worth, then embarked by ship on September 20 from New Orleans to Le Havre, France, and immediately traveled to the United Kingdom. Arriving in Southampton on October 9, he told officials he had $700 and planned to stay for one week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. On the same day, he flew to Helsinki, where he checked in at the Hotel Torni, room 309, then moved to Hotel Klaus Kurki, room 429. He was issued a Soviet visa on October 14. Oswald left Helsinki by train on the following day, crossed the Soviet border at Vainikkala, and arrived in Moscow on October 16. His visa, valid only for a week, was due to expire on October 21. During his stay in the Soviet Union his mail was intercepted and read by the CIA, with Reuben Efron being charged with this assignment.
Almost immediately after arriving, Oswald informed his Intourist guide of his desire to become a Soviet citizen. When asked why by the various Soviet officials he encountered – all of whom, by Oswald's account, found his wish incomprehensible – he said that he was a communist, and gave what he described in his diary as "vauge [sic] answers about 'Great Soviet Union'". On October 21, the day his visa was due to expire, he was told that his citizenship application had been refused, and that he had to leave the Soviet Union that evening. Distraught, Oswald inflicted a minor but bloody wound to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub soon before his Intourist guide was due to arrive to escort him from the country, according to his diary because he wished to kill himself in a way that would shock her. Delaying Oswald's departure because of his self-inflicted injury, the Soviets kept him in a Moscow hospital under psychiatric observation for a week, until October 28, 1959.
According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials that day, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States. Oswald replied by insisting that he wanted to live in the Soviet Union as a Soviet national. When pressed for identification papers, he provided his Marine Corps discharge papers.
On October 31, Oswald appeared at the United States embassy in Moscow and declared a desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship. He said: "I have made up my mind. I'm through." He told the U.S. embassy interviewing officer, Richard Edward Snyder, that "he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he had voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen he would make known to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest." Such statements led to Oswald's hardship/honorable military reserve discharge being changed to undesirable. The story of the defection of a former U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported by both the Associated Press and United Press International.
Though Oswald had wanted to attend Moscow State University, in January 1960 he was sent to Minsk, Belarus, to work as a lathe operator at the Gorizont Electronics Factory, which produced radios, televisions, and military and space electronics. Stanislau Shushkevich, who later became independent Belarus's first head of state, also worked at Gorizont at the time, and was assigned to help Oswald improve his Russian. Oswald received a government-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay, which allowed him to have a comfortable standard of living by working-class Soviet standards, though he was kept under constant surveillance.
From mid-1960 to early 1961, Oswald was in a relationship with Ella German (Belarusian: Эла Герман), a Belarusian coworker born in 1937. They ate together in the factory cafeteria every day and dated about twice each week. German later described Oswald as "a pleasant-looking guy with a good sense of humor ... not as rough and rude as the men here were back then"; she did not love him, but thought he was lonely and continued to date him out of pity. Their relationship became more serious – in Oswald's eyes – during the summer and fall of 1960, but began to deteriorate after German learned in October that Oswald had been seeing other women. On January 2, 1961, Oswald proposed, but German refused.
Return to the U.S.
Oswald wrote in his diary in January 1961: "I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough." Shortly afterwards, Oswald (who had never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship) wrote to the Embassy of the United States, Moscow, requesting the return of his American passport, and proposing to return to the U.S. if any charges against him would be dropped.
In March 1961, Oswald met Marina Prusakova (born 1941), a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married six weeks later. The Oswalds' first child, June, was born on February 15, 1962. On May 24, 1962, Oswald and Marina applied at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for documents that enabled her to immigrate to the U.S. On June 1, the U.S. Embassy gave Oswald a repatriation loan of $435.71. Oswald, Marina, and their infant daughter left for the United States, where they received less attention from the press than Oswald expected. According to the Warren Report, Oswald and his wife returned to America on June 13, they arrived onboard the Maasdam and landed at Hoboken in New Jersey. Here they were met by Spas T. Raikin of the Travelers Aid Society who had been contacted by the US Department of State.
Dallas–Fort Worth
The Oswalds soon settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where Lee's mother and brother lived. Lee began a manuscript on Soviet life, though he eventually gave up the project. The Oswalds also became acquainted with a number of anti-Communist Russian and East European émigrés in the area. In testimony to the Warren Commission, Alexander Kleinlerer said that the Russian émigrés sympathized with Marina, while merely tolerating Oswald, whom they regarded as rude and arrogant.
Although the Russian émigrés eventually abandoned Marina when she made no sign of leaving her husband, Oswald found an unlikely friend in 51-year-old Russian émigré George de Mohrenschildt, a well-educated petroleum geologist with international business connections. A native of Russia, Mohrenschildt later told the Warren Commission that Oswald had a "remarkable fluency in Russian". Marina, meanwhile, befriended Ruth Paine, a Quaker trying to learn Russian, and her husband Michael Paine, who worked for Bell Helicopter.
In July 1962, Oswald was hired by the Leslie Welding Company as a sheet metal worker in Dallas; he disliked the work and quit after three months. On October 12, he started working for the graphic-arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. A fellow employee at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall testified that Oswald's rudeness at his new job was such that fights threatened to break out, and that he once saw Oswald reading a Russian-language publication. Oswald was fired in the first week of April 1963.
Edwin Walker assassination attempt
Main article: John F. Kennedy assassination rifleIn March 1963, Oswald used the alias "A. Hidell" to make a mail-order purchase of a secondhand 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle for $19.95, plus $1.50 for shipping. He also purchased a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver by mail for $29.95 plus $1.27 shipping. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald attempted to kill retired U.S. Major General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963, and that Oswald fired the Carcano rifle at Walker through a window from less than 100 feet (30 m) away as Walker sat at a desk in his Dallas home. The bullet struck the window-frame and Walker's only injuries were bullet fragments to the forearm. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations stated that the "evidence strongly suggested" that Oswald carried out the shooting.
General Walker was an outspoken anti-communist, segregationist, and member of the John Birch Society. In 1961, Walker had been relieved of his command of the 24th Division of the U.S. Army in West Germany for distributing right-wing literature to his troops. Walker's later actions in opposition to racial integration at the University of Mississippi led to his arrest on insurrection, seditious conspiracy, and other charges. He was temporarily held in a mental institution on orders from President Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, but a grand jury declined to indict him.
Marina Oswald testified that her husband told her that he traveled by bus to General Walker's house and shot at Walker with his rifle. She said that Oswald considered Walker to be the leader of a "fascist organization". A note Oswald left for Marina on the night of the attempt, telling her what to do if he did not return, was found ten days after the Kennedy assassination.
Before the Kennedy assassination, Dallas police had no suspects in the Walker shooting, but Oswald's involvement was suspected within hours of his arrest following the assassination. The Walker bullet was too damaged to run conclusive ballistics studies on it, but neutron activation analysis later showed that it was "extremely likely" that it was made by the same manufacturer and for the same rifle make as the two bullets which later struck Kennedy.
George de Mohrenschildt testified that he "knew that Oswald disliked General Walker". Regarding this, de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne recalled an incident that occurred the weekend following the Walker assassination attempt. The de Mohrenschildts testified that on April 14, 1963, just before Easter Sunday, they were visiting the Oswalds at their new apartment and had brought them a toy Easter bunny to give to their child. As Oswald's wife Marina was showing Jeanne around the apartment, they discovered Oswald's rifle standing upright, leaning against the wall inside a closet. Jeanne told George that Oswald had a rifle, and George joked to Oswald, "Were you the one who took a pot-shot at General Walker?" When asked about Oswald's reaction to this question, George de Mohrenschildt told the Warren Commission that Oswald "smiled at that". When de Mohrenschildt's wife Jeanne was asked about Oswald's reaction, she said, "I didn't notice anything", and continued, "we started laughing our heads off, big joke, big George's joke". Jeanne de Mohrenschildt testified that this was the last time she or her husband ever saw the Oswalds.
New Orleans
Oswald returned to New Orleans on April 24, 1963. Marina's friend Ruth Paine drove her by car from Dallas to join Oswald in New Orleans the following month. On May 10, Oswald was hired by the Reily Coffee Company as a machinery greaser. He was fired in July "because his work was not satisfactory and because he spent too much time loitering in Adrian Alba's garage next door, where he read rifle and hunting magazines".
In his 1988 book On the Trail of the Assassins, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed that Oswald really spent that time across the street at 544 Camp Street. These were the law offices of Guy Banister, a former FBI agent, an avid segregationist, and a local politician. Garrison added that Guy Banister, during the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, was most interested in infiltrating the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and used Oswald as his spy. In their 1978 investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated a possible connection between Oswald and Banister at the Camp Street address. The HSCA wrote that it "could find no documentary proof that Banister had a file on Lee Harvey Oswald nor could the committee find credible witnesses whoever saw Lee Harvey Oswald and Guy Banister together. There are, however, indications that Banister at least knew of Oswald's leafletting activities and probably maintained a file on him."
On May 26, Oswald wrote to the New York City headquarters of the pro-Fidel Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans". Three days later, the FPCC responded to Oswald's letter advising against opening a New Orleans office "at least not ... at the very beginning". In a follow-up letter, Oswald replied, "Against your advice, I have decided to take an office from the very beginning." On May 29, Oswald ordered the following items from a local printer: 500 application forms, 300 membership cards, and 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba". According to Marina, Lee told her to sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on his membership card.
According to anti-Castro militant Carlos Bringuier, Oswald visited him on August 5 and 6 at a store he owned in New Orleans. Bringuier was the New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro organization Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE). Bringuier would later tell the Warren Commission that he believed Oswald's visits were an attempt by Oswald to infiltrate his group. On August 9, Oswald turned up in downtown New Orleans handing out pro-Castro leaflets. Bringuier confronted Oswald, claiming he was tipped off about Oswald's leafleting by a friend. A scuffle ensued and Oswald, Bringuier, and two of Bringuier's friends were arrested for disturbing the peace. Prior to leaving the police station, Oswald requested to speak with an FBI agent. Oswald told the agent that he was a member of the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which he claimed had 35 members and was led by A. J. Hidell. In fact, Oswald was the branch's only member and it had never been chartered by the national organization.
A week later, on August 16, Oswald again passed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets with two hired helpers, this time in front of the International Trade Mart. The incident was filmed by WDSU-TV. The next day, Oswald was interviewed by WDSU radio commentator William Stuckey, who probed Oswald's background. A few days later, Oswald accepted Stuckey's invitation to take part in a radio debate with Carlos Bringuier and Bringuier's associate Edward Scannell Butler, head of the right-wing Information Council of the Americas (INCA).
Mexico
Marina's friend Ruth Paine transported Marina and her child by car from New Orleans to the Paine home in Irving, Texas, near Dallas, on September 23, 1963. Oswald stayed in New Orleans at least two more days to collect a $33 unemployment check. It is uncertain when he left New Orleans; he is next known to have boarded a bus in Houston on September 26 – bound for the Mexican border, rather than Dallas – and to have told other bus passengers that he planned to travel to Cuba via Mexico. He arrived in Mexico City on September 27, where he applied for a transit visa at the Cuban consulate, claiming he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union. The Cuban consular officials insisted Oswald would need Soviet approval, but he was unable to get prompt co-operation from the Soviet consulate. CIA documents note Oswald spoke "terrible hardly recognizable Russian" during his meetings with Cuban and Soviet officials.
After five days of shuttling between consulates – and including a heated argument with an official at the Cuban consulate, impassioned pleas to KGB agents, and at least some CIA scrutiny – Oswald was told by a Cuban consular officer that he was disinclined to approve the visa, saying "a person like in place of aiding the Cuban Revolution, was doing it harm". Later, on October 18, the Cuban embassy approved the visa, but by this time Oswald was back in the United States and had given up on his plans to visit Cuba and the Soviet Union. Still later, eleven days before the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald wrote to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., saying, "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana, as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business."
While the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had visited Mexico City and the Cuban and Soviet consulates, questions regarding whether someone posing as Oswald had appeared at the embassies were serious enough to be investigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Later, the Committee agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald had visited Mexico City and concluded that "the majority of evidence tends to indicate" that Oswald visited the consulates, but the Committee could not rule out the possibility that someone else had used his name in visiting the consulates.
According to a CIA document released in 2017, it is possible Oswald was trying to get the necessary documents from the embassies to make a quick escape to the Soviet Union after the assassination.
Return to Dallas
On October 2, 1963, Oswald left Mexico City by bus and arrived in Dallas the next day. Ruth Paine said that a neighbor told her on October 14 about a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository, where her neighbor's brother, Wesley Frazier, worked. Mrs. Paine informed Oswald, who was interviewed at the depository and was hired there on October 16 as a $1.25 an hour minimum wage order filler. Oswald's supervisor, Roy S. Truly (1907–1985), said that Oswald "did a good day's work" and was an above-average employee. During the week, Oswald stayed in a Dallas rooming house under the name "O. H. Lee", but he spent his weekends with Marina at the Paine home in Irving. Oswald did not drive a car, but he commuted to and from Dallas on Mondays and Fridays with his co-worker Wesley Frazier. On October 20 (a month before the assassination), the Oswalds' second daughter, Audrey, was born.
The Dallas branch of the FBI became interested in Oswald after its agent learned that the CIA had determined that Oswald had been in contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico, making Oswald a possible espionage case. FBI agents twice visited the Paine home in early November, when Oswald was not present, and spoke to Mrs. Paine. Oswald visited the Dallas FBI office about two to three weeks before the assassination, asking to see Special Agent James P. Hosty. When he was told that Hosty was unavailable, Oswald left a note that, according to the receptionist, read: "Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police Department if you don't stop bothering my wife" "Lee Harvey Oswald". The note allegedly contained a threat, but accounts vary as to whether Oswald threatened to "blow up the FBI" or merely "report this to higher authorities". According to Hosty, the note said, "If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don't cease bothering my wife, I will take the appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities." Agent Hosty said that he destroyed Oswald's note on orders from his superior, Gordon Shanklin, after Oswald was named the suspect in the Kennedy assassination.
John F. Kennedy and J. D. Tippit shootings
Main article: Assassination of John F. KennedyIn the days before Kennedy's arrival, several local newspapers published the route of Kennedy's motorcade, which passed the Texas School Book Depository. On Thursday, November 21, 1963, Oswald asked Frazier for an unusual mid-week lift back to Irving, saying he had to pick up some curtain rods. The next morning (the day of the assassination), he returned to Dallas with Frazier. He left $170 and his wedding ring, but took a large paper bag with him. Frazier reported that Oswald told him the bag contained curtain rods. The Warren Commission concluded that the package of "curtain rods" actually contained the rifle that Oswald was going to use for the assassination.
One of Oswald's co-workers, Charles Givens, testified to the Commission that he last saw Oswald on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at approximately 11:55 a.m., which was 35 minutes before the motorcade entered Dealey Plaza. The Commission report stated that Oswald was not seen again "until after the shooting". In an FBI report taken the day after the assassination, Givens said that the encounter took place at 11:30 a.m. and that he saw Oswald reading a newspaper in the first-floor domino room at 11:50 a.m, 20 minutes later. William Shelley, a foreman at the depository, also testified that he saw Oswald near the telephone on the first floor between 11:45 and 11:50 a.m. Janitor Eddie Piper also testified that he spoke to Oswald on the first floor at 12:00 p.m. Another co-worker, Bonnie Ray Williams, was eating his lunch on the sixth floor of the depository and was there until at least 12:10 p.m. He said that during that time, he did not see Oswald, or anyone else, on the sixth floor and thought that he was the only person up there. He also said that some boxes in the southeast corner may have prevented him from seeing deep into the "sniper's nest". Various workers – including Givens, Junior Jarman, Troy West, Danny Arce, Jack Dougherty, Joe Molina, Mrs. Robert Reid, and Bill Lovelady – who were either in the first or second floor lunchrooms at times between 12:00 and 12:30 pm reported that Oswald was not present in those rooms during their lunch breaks.
As Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza at approximately 12:30 p.m. on November 22, Oswald fired three rifle shots from the southeast-corner window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, killing the President and seriously wounding Texas Governor John Connally. One shot apparently missed the presidential limousine entirely, another struck both Kennedy and Connally, and a third bullet struck Kennedy in the head, killing him. Bystander James Tague received a minor facial injury from a small piece of curbstone that had fragmented after it was struck by one of the bullets.
Witness Howard Brennan was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository and watching the motorcade go by. He notified police that he heard a shot come from above and looked up to see a man with a rifle fire another shot from the southeast corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking through the window. Brennan gave a description of the shooter, and Dallas police subsequently broadcast descriptions at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m. After the second shot was fired, Brennan recalled, "This man I saw previous was aiming for his last shot ... and maybe paused for another second as though to assure himself that he had hit his mark."
The paper bag Frazier had described was found by police near the open sixth-floor window from which Oswald was determined to have fired; it was 38 inches (97 cm) long and had marks on its inside consistent with having been used to carry a rifle. Three shell casings were found on the floor near the window, and a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with telescopic sight was found on the northwest corner of the sixth-floor near the staircase.
According to the investigations, after the shooting Oswald covered the rifle with boxes and descended via the rear stairwell. About 90 seconds after the shots sounded, he was encountered in the second-floor lunchroom by Dallas police officer Marrion L. Baker, who was with Oswald's supervisor, Roy Truly. Baker let Oswald pass after Truly identified him as an employee. Baker later said Oswald did not seem "nervous" or "out of breath". Truly said that Oswald looked "startled" when Baker pointed his gun directly at him. Mrs. Robert Reid, a clerical supervisor at the depository who returned to her office within two minutes of the shooting, said she saw Oswald, "very calm", on the second floor holding a Coca-Cola bottle. As they walked past each other, Mrs. Reid said to Oswald, "The President has been shot" to which he mumbled something in response, but Reid did not understand him. Oswald was believed to have left the depository through the front entrance just before police sealed it off. Truly later pointed out to officers that Oswald was the only employee that he was certain was missing.
At about 12:40 p.m., 10 minutes after the shooting, Oswald boarded a city bus. Probably due to heavy traffic, he requested a transfer from the driver and got off two blocks later. Oswald then took a taxicab to his rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Avenue and entered through the front door at about 1:00 p.m. According to his housekeeper Earlene Roberts, Oswald immediately went to his room, "walking pretty fast". Roberts said that Oswald left "a very few minutes" later, zipping up a jacket he was not wearing when he had entered earlier. As Oswald left, Roberts looked out of the window of her house and last saw him standing at the northbound Beckley Avenue bus stop in front of her house.
The Warren Commission concluded that at approximately 1:15 p.m., Dallas Patrolman J. D. Tippit drove up in his patrol car alongside Oswald, presumably because Oswald resembled the broadcast description of the man seen by witness Howard Brennan firing shots at Kennedy's motorcade. He encountered Oswald near the corner of East 10th Street and North Patton Avenue. This location is about nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) southeast of Oswald's rooming house – a distance that the Warren Commission concluded "Oswald could have easily walked". Tippit pulled alongside Oswald and "apparently exchanged words with through the right front or vent window". "Shortly after 1:15 p.m.", Tippit exited his car. Oswald immediately fired his pistol and killed the policeman with four shots. Numerous witnesses heard the shots and saw Oswald flee the scene holding a revolver; nine positively identified him as the man who shot Tippit and fled. Four cartridge cases found at the scene were identified by expert witnesses before the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee as having been fired from the revolver later found in Oswald's possession, excluding all other weapons. The bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be positively identified as having been fired from Oswald's revolver, as the bullets were too extensively damaged to make conclusive assessments.
Arrest at the Texas Theatre
Shoe store manager Johnny Brewer testified that he saw Oswald "ducking into" the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip without paying into the nearby Texas Theatre, where the film War Is Hell was playing. He alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned police, at about 1:40 p.m. As police arrived, the house lights were brought up and Brewer pointed out Oswald sitting near the rear of the theater. Police Officer Nick McDonald testified that he was the first to reach Oswald and that Oswald seemed ready to surrender saying, "Well, it is all over now." McDonald said that Oswald pulled out a pistol tucked into the front of his pants, then pointed the pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. McDonald stated that the pistol did not fire because the pistol's hammer came down on the webbing between the thumb and index finger of his hand as he grabbed for the pistol. McDonald also said that Oswald struck him, but that he struck back and Oswald was disarmed. As he was led from the theater, Oswald shouted he was a victim of police brutality.
Oswald was formally arraigned for the murder of Officer Tippit at 7:10 p.m. Soon after his arrest, Oswald encountered reporters in a hallway. Oswald declared, "I didn't shoot anybody" and, "They've taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!" Later, at an arranged press meeting, a reporter asked, "Did you kill the President?" and Oswald – who by that time had been advised of the charge of murdering Tippit, but had not yet been arraigned in Kennedy's death – answered, "No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question." As he was led from the room the question was called out, "What did you do in Russia?" and, "How did you hurt your eye?"; Oswald answered, "A policeman hit me." By early the next morning (shortly after 1:30 a.m.) he had been arraigned for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Police interrogation
Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days at Dallas Police Headquarters. He admitted that he went to his rooming house after leaving the book depository. He also admitted that he changed his clothes and armed himself with a .38 caliber revolver before leaving his house to go to the theater. Oswald denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, denied owning a rifle, and said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes. He denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment (he said that the package contained his lunch). He also denied carrying a long, bulky package to work the morning of the assassination. Oswald denied knowing an "A. J. Hidell". Oswald was then shown a forged Selective Service System card bearing his photograph and the alias, "Alek James Hidell" that he had in his possession at the time of his arrest. Oswald refused to answer any questions concerning the card, saying "you have the card yourself and you know as much about it as I do".
FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty and Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz (chief of homicide) conducted the first interrogation of Oswald on Friday, November 22. When Oswald was asked to account for himself at the time of the assassination, he replied that he was eating his lunch in the first-floor lounge (known as the "domino room"). He said that he then went to the second-floor lunchroom to buy a Coca-Cola from the soda machine there and was drinking it when he encountered Dallas motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker, who had entered the building with his gun drawn. Oswald said that while he was in the domino room, he saw two "Negro employees" walking by, one he recognized as "Junior" and a shorter man whose name he could not recall. Junior Jarman and Harold Norman confirmed to the Warren Commission that they had "walked through" the domino room around noon during their lunch break. When asked if anyone else was in the domino room, Norman testified that somebody else was there, but he could not remember who it was. Jarman testified that Oswald was not in the domino room when he was there.
When homicide detective Jim Leavelle testified before the Warren Commission, he said that the first time he had ever sat in on an interrogation with Oswald was on Sunday morning, November 24, 1963. When Counsel Joseph Ball asked Leavelle if he had ever spoken to Oswald before this interrogation, he stated, "No, I had never talked to him before". Leavelle then stated during his testimony that "the only time I had connections with Oswald was this Sunday morning . I never had occasion... to talk with him at any time..." During Oswald's last interrogation on November 24, according to postal inspector Harry Holmes, Oswald was again asked where he was at the time of the shooting. Holmes (who attended the interrogation at the invitation of Captain Will Fritz) said that Oswald replied that he was working on an upper floor when the shooting occurred, then went downstairs where he encountered Dallas motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker.
Oswald asked for legal representation several times during the interrogation, and he also asked for assistance during encounters with reporters. When H. Louis Nichols, President of the Dallas Bar Association, met with him in his cell on Saturday, he declined their services, saying he wanted to be represented by John Abt, chief counsel to the Communist Party USA, or by lawyers associated with the American Civil Liberties Union. Both Oswald and Ruth Paine tried to reach Abt by telephone several times Saturday and Sunday, but Abt was away for the weekend. Oswald also declined his brother Robert's offer on Saturday to obtain a local attorney.
During an interrogation with Captain Fritz, when asked, "Are you a communist?", he replied, "No, I am not a communist. I am a Marxist."
Murder
Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald | |
---|---|
Ruby shooting Oswald, who is being escorted by Dallas police. Detective Jim Leavelle is wearing the tan suit. | |
Location | Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
Date | November 24, 1963; 61 years ago (1963-11-24) 11:21 a.m. (CST) |
Target | Lee Harvey Oswald |
Attack type | Murder by shooting |
Weapon | .38 caliber Colt Cobra revolver |
Deaths | 1 (Lee Harvey Oswald) |
Perpetrator | Jack Ruby |
Motive | Disputed |
Verdict | Guilty |
Convictions | Murder with malice
|
Sentence | Death (overturned) |
On Sunday, November 24, detectives were escorting Oswald through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters toward an armored car that was to take him from the city jail (located on the fourth floor of police headquarters) to the nearby county jail. At 11:21 a.m. CST, Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby approached Oswald from the side of the crowd and shot him once in the abdomen at close range. As the shot rang out, a police detective recognized Ruby and exclaimed: "Jack, you son of a bitch!" The crowd outside the headquarters applauded when they heard that Oswald had been shot.
As Oswald ascended in the elevator to the basement, his last recorded words were "I want to see the American Civil Liberties Union". When the shot rang out, Oswald screamed "Oh!" in pain and his hands clutched at his stomach as he moaned while slumping to the floor. While Ruby was subdued by police, Oswald was carried back into the basement level jail office. Detective Billy Combest asked Oswald, "Do you have anything you want to tell us now?" Oswald shook his head.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Oswald was placed in an ambulance and was driven to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead two days earlier. Frederick Bieberdorf, a medical student on duty who rode in the ambulance, said that—several blocks before reaching the hospital—Oswald started thrashing about, resisting Beiberdorf's efforts of heart massage and attempting to free an oxygen mask over his mouth. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m; Dallas police chief Jesse Curry announced his death on a TV news broadcast.
At 2:45 p.m. the same day, an autopsy was performed on Oswald in the Office of the County Medical Examiner. Dallas County medical examiner Earl Rose announced the results of the gross autopsy: "The two things that we could determine were, first, that he died from a hemorrhage from a gunshot wound, and that otherwise he was a physically healthy male." Rose's examination found that the 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.
A network television pool camera was broadcasting live to cover the transfer; millions of people watching on NBC saw the shooting as it happened, and on other networks within minutes afterward. In 1964, Robert H. Jackson of the Dallas Times Herald was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his photograph taken immediately after the shot was fired, as Oswald began to double over in pain.
Jack Ruby's motive
Ruby later said he had been distraught over Kennedy's death and that his motive for killing Oswald was "saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial". Others have hypothesized that Ruby was part of a conspiracy. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, said: "The most plausible explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight hours before he silenced him forever."
Burial
Miller Funeral Home had great difficulty finding a cemetery willing to accept Oswald's remains; Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth eventually agreed. A Lutheran minister reluctantly agreed to officiate but then failed to appear. Reverend Louis Saunders of the Fort Worth Council of Churches volunteered, saying that "someone had to help this family". He performed a brief graveside service under heavy guard on November 25. Reporters covering the burial were asked to act as pallbearers.
Oswald's original tombstone, which gave his full name, birth date, and death date, was stolen four years after the assassination, and his mother replaced it with a marker simply inscribed Oswald. His mother's body was buried beside his in 1981. A claim by Michael Eddowes in The Oswald File (1975) that a look-alike Russian agent was buried in place of Oswald led to the body's exhumation on October 4, 1981. Dental records confirmed it was Oswald. The remains were reburied in a new coffin because of water damage to the original.
In 2010, Miller Funeral Home employed a Los Angeles auction house to sell the original mole-skin covered pine coffin to an anonymous bidder for $87,468. The sale was halted after Oswald's brother, Robert (1934–2017), sued to reclaim the coffin. In 2015, a district judge in Tarrant County, Texas, ruled that the funeral home intentionally concealed the existence of the coffin from Robert Oswald, who had originally purchased it and believed that it had been discarded after the exhumation, and ordered it returned to Robert Oswald along with damages equal to the sale price. Robert Oswald's attorney stated that the coffin would likely be destroyed "as soon as possible".
Official investigations
Warren Commission
President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order that created the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. The commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy, and the Warren Report could not ascribe any one motive or group of motives to Oswald's actions:
It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history – a role as the "great man" who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. He also had demonstrated a capacity to act decisively and without regard to the consequences when such action would further his aims of the moment. Out of these and the many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of assassinating President Kennedy.
The proceedings of the commission were closed, though not secret. Approximately three percent of its files have yet to be released to the public, which has continued to provoke speculation among researchers.
Ramsey Clark Panel
In 1968, the Ramsey Clark Panel examined various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence. It concluded that Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him: one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone, and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its right side.
House Select Committee
Main article: United States House Select Committee on Assassinations Further information: John F. Kennedy assassination Dictabelt recordingIn 1979, after a review of the evidence and of prior investigations, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) largely concurred with the Warren Commission and was preparing to issue a finding that Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy. Late in the Committee's proceedings, a dictabelt recording was introduced, purportedly recording sounds heard in Dealey Plaza before, during, and after the shots. After an analysis by the firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman appeared to indicate more than three gunshots, the HSCA revised its findings to assert a "high probability that two gunmen fired" at Kennedy and that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy". Although the Committee was "unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy", it made a number of further findings regarding the likelihood that particular groups, named in the findings, were involved. Four of the twelve members of the HSCA dissented from this conclusion.
The acoustic evidence has since been discredited. Officer H. B. McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came, has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. McLain asked the Committee, "'If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?'"
In 1982, a panel of twelve scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), including Nobel laureates Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez, unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the shots, and did not indicate additional gunshots. Their conclusions were published in the journal Science. In a 2001 article in the journal Science & Justice, D. B. Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. He concluded with a 96.3 percent certainty that at least two gunmen fired at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll. In 2005, Thomas's conclusions were rebutted in the same journal. Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination. In 2010, D. B. Thomas challenged the 2005 Science & Justice article and restated his conclusion that there were at least two gunmen.
Backyard photos
Main article: John F. Kennedy assassination riflePhotos of Oswald holding the rifle that was later determined to be the murder weapon are an important piece of evidence linking Oswald to the crime. The photos were uncovered with other possessions belonging to Oswald in the garage of Ruth Paine in Irving, Texas, on November 23, 1963. Marina Oswald told the Warren Commission that around March 31, 1963, she had taken pictures of Oswald as he posed with a Carcano rifle, a holstered pistol, and two Marxist newspapers – The Militant and The Worker.
Oswald had sent one of the photos to The Militant's New York office with an accompanying letter stating he was "prepared for anything": according to Sylvia Weinstein, who handled the newspaper's subscriptions at the time, Oswald was seen as "kookie" and politically "dumb and totally naive", as he apparently did not know that The Militant, published by the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, and The Worker, published by the pro-Soviet Communist Party USA, were rival publications and ideologically opposed to each other. The pictures were shown to Oswald after his arrest, but he insisted that they were forgeries.
In 1964, Marina testified before the Warren Commission that she had photographed Oswald, at his request and using his camera. These photos were labelled CE 133-A and CE 133-B. CE 133-A shows the rifle in Oswald's left hand and newspapers in front of his chest in the other, while the rifle is held with the right hand in CE 133-B. The Carcano in the images had markings matching those on the rifle found in the Book Depository after the assassination. Oswald's mother testified that on the day after the assassination she and Marina destroyed another photograph with Oswald holding the rifle with both hands over his head, with "To my daughter June" written on it.
When shown one of the photos during his interrogation by Dallas police, Oswald stated that it was a fake. According to Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz:
He said that the picture was not his, that the face was his face, but that this picture had been made by someone superimposing his face, the other part of the picture was not him at all and that he had never seen the picture before. ... He told me that he understood photography real well, and that in time, he would be able to show that it was not his picture, and that it had been made by someone else.
The HSCA obtained another first-generation print (from CE 133-A) on April 1, 1977, from the widow of George de Mohrenschildt. The words "Hunter of fascists – ha ha ha!" written in block Russian were on the back. Also in English were added in script: "To my friend George, Lee Oswald, 5/IV/63 ." Handwriting experts for the HSCA concluded the English inscription and signature were by Oswald. After two original photos, one negative and one first-generation copy had been found, the Senate Intelligence Committee located (in 1976) a third backyard photo (CE 133-C) showing Oswald with newspapers held away from his body in his right hand.
These photos, widely recognized as some of the most significant evidence against Oswald, have been subjected to rigorous analysis. Photographic experts consulted by the HSCA concluded they were genuine, answering twenty-one points raised by critics. Marina Oswald has always maintained she took the photos herself, and the 1963 de Mohrenschildt print bearing Oswald's signature clearly indicate they existed before the assassination. Nonetheless, some continue to contest their authenticity. In 2009, after digitally analyzing the photograph of Oswald holding the rifle and paper, computer scientist Hany Farid concluded that the photo "almost certainly was not altered".
Other investigations and dissenting theories
Main article: John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theoriesSome critics have not accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission and have proposed several other theories, such as that Oswald conspired with others, or was not involved at all and was framed. A Gallup poll taken in mid-November 2013, showed 61% believed that Kennedy was killed as a result of conspiracy, and only 30% thought Oswald acted alone. Oswald was never prosecuted because he was murdered two days after the assassination. In March 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of Oswald, David Ferrie, and others. Garrison believed that the men were part of an arms smuggling ring supplying weapons to the anti-Castro Cubans in a conspiracy with elements of the CIA to kill Kennedy. The trial of Clay Shaw began in January 1969 in Orleans Parish Criminal Court. The jury acquitted Shaw.
Several films have fictionalized a trial of Oswald, depicting what may have happened had Ruby not killed Oswald, including The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1964), The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977), and On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald (1986). The 1986 docu-trial was a 21-hour unscripted mock trial on television, argued by lawyers before a judge, with unscripted testimony from surviving witnesses to the events surrounding the assassination; it was aired again in 1988 including additional courtroom footage not included in the original 1986 Showtime/MPI version. The jury returned a verdict of guilty and inspired Vincent Bugliosi, who in 2005 described the 1986 mock trial as "the closest thing to a trial that Lee Harvey Oswald ever had or will have to write", to write his "Oswald acted alone" magnum opus Reclaiming History (2007). In 1992, the American Bar Association conducted two mock Oswald trials: the first trial ended in a hung jury, while the second trial saw the jury acquitting Oswald.
See also
- John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln
- Charles J. Guiteau, assassin of President James A. Garfield
- Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President William McKinley
- Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Robert F. Kennedy
Notes
- These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1963), the Warren Commission (1964), the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979), the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police Department.
- The schools were:
- 1st grade: Benbrook Common School (Fort Worth, Texas), October 31, 1945
- 1st grade (again): Covington Elementary School (Covington, Louisiana), September 1946 – January 1947
- 1st grade (end): Clayton Public School (Ft Worth, TX), January–May 1947
- 2nd grade: Clayton Public School (Ft Worth, TX), September 1947
- 2nd grade (end): Clark Elementary School (Ft Worth, TX), March 1948
- 3rd grade: Arlington Heights Elementary School (Ft Worth, TX), September 1948
- 4th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (since renamed Luella Merrett, Ft Worth), Sep. 1949
- 5th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (Ft Worth), September 1950
- 6th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (Ft Worth), September 1951
- 7th grade: Trinity Evangelical Lutheran School (Bronx, NYC, NY), August 1952
- 7th grade: Public School 117 (Bronx, NY), September 1952 (attended 17 of 64 days)
- 7th grade (end): Public School 44 (Bronx, NY), March 23, 1953
- Reformatory: Youth House (NYC, NY), April–May 1953.
- 8th grade: Public School 44 (Bronx, NY), September 14, 1953
- 8th grade (end): Beauregard Junior High School (New Orleans), January 13, 1954
- 9th grade: Beauregard Junior High School (New Orleans), September 1954 – June 1955
- 10th grade: Warren Easton High School (New Orleans), September–October 1955 (Warren appendix 13)
- (tried to enlist in U.S. Marines using affidavit claiming age 17)
- (worked as clerk/messenger in New Orleans, rather than school)
- 10th grade (again): Arlington Heights High School (Ft Worth, TX), September–October 1956. Final withdrawal from high school, 10th grade. (Warren appendix 13)
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 22, p. 705, CE 1385, Notes of interview of Lee Harvey Oswald Archived January 12, 2023, at the Wayback Machine conducted by Aline Mosby in Moscow in November 1959. Oswald: "When I was working in the middle of the night on guard duty, I would think how long it would be and how much money I would have to save. It would be like being out of prison. I saved about $1500." During Oswald's two years and ten months of service in the Marine Corps he received $3,452.20, after all taxes, allotments and other deductions as well as his GED. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 26, p. 709, CE 3099, Certified military pay records for Lee Harvey Oswald for the period October 24, 1956, to September 11, 1959 Archived October 19, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
- Though later reports described her uncle, with whom she was living, as a colonel in the KGB, he was a lumber industry expert in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) with a bureaucratic rank of Polkovnik. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee, Harper & Row, 1977, pp. 64–65. ISBN 978-0-06-012953-8.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, p. 123, Affidavit of Alexander Kleinlerer Archived October 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine: "Anna Meller, Mrs. Hall, George Bouhe, and the deMohrenschildts, and all that group had pity for Marina and her child. None of us cared for Oswald because of his political philosophy, his criticism of the United States, his apparent lack of interest in anyone but himself, and because of his treatment of Marina."
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Dennis Hyman Ofstein: "I would say he didn't get along with people and that several people had words with him at times about the way he barged around the plant, and one of the fellows back in the photosetter department almost got in a fight with him one day, and I believe it was Mr. Graef that stepped in and broke it up before it got started..."
- United States House Select Committee on Assassinations,
Testimony of Dr. Vincent P. Guinn Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine:
- Mr. WOLF. In your professional opinion, Dr. Guinn, is the fragment removed from General Walker's house a fragment from a WCC (Western Cartridge Company) Mannlicher–Carcano bullet?
- Dr. GUINN. I would say that it is extremely likely that it is, because there are very few, very few other ammunitions that would be in this range. I don't know of any that are specifically this close as these numbers indicate, but somewhere near them there are a few others, but essentially this is in the range that is rather characteristic of WCC Mannlicher–Carcano bullet lead.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Charles Givens Archived May 25, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
- Carolyn Arnold, the secretary to the Vice President of the TSBD, provided conflicting information on Oswald's whereabouts. In the first of two interviews with the FBI in the days following the assassination, Arnold stated that she my have "caught a fleeting glimpse" of someone she believed to be Oswald standing in the first-floor hallway of the building around 12:15 pm. In the second interview, she stated she did not see him at all. Although she signed her statement as correct, in 1978 she told author Anthony Summers that she had been misquoted by the FBI and that she had actually seen Oswald in the second floor lunchroom at 12:15 pm.(Posner 1993, pp. 225–226).
- The first report of Tippit's shooting Archived February 4, 2010, at the Wayback Machine was transmitted over Police Channel 1 sometime between 1:16 and 1:19 p.m., as indicated by verbal time stamps made periodically by the dispatcher. Specifically, the first report began 1 minute 41 seconds after the 1: 16 time stamp. Before that, witness Domingo Benavides could be heard unsuccessfully trying to use Tippit's police radio microphone, beginning at 1:16. Dale K. Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, 1998, p. 384. ISBN 0-9662709-7-5.
- By the evening of November 22, five of them (Helen Markham, Barbara Jeanette Davis, Virginia Davis, Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard) had identified Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. A sixth (William Scoggins) did so the next day. Three others (Harold Russell, Pat Patterson, Warren Reynolds) subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses (Domingo Benavides, William Arthur Smith) testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness (L.J. Lewis) felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. Warren Commission Hearings, CE 1968, Location of Eyewitnesses to the Movements of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Vicinity of the Tippit Killing Archived February 25, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
- "Two misconceptions about the Warren Commission hearing need to be clarified ... hearings were closed to the public unless the witness appearing before the Commission requested an open hearing. No witness except one ... requested an open hearing ... Second, although the hearings (except one) were conducted in private, they were not secret. In a secret hearing, the witness is instructed not to disclose his testimony to any third party, and the hearing testimony is not published for public consumption. The witnesses who appeared before the Commission were free to repeat what they said to anyone they pleased, and all of their testimony was subsequently published in the first fifteen volumes put out by the Warren Commission." (Bugliosi, p. 332)
References
- "John F Kennedy, Dallas Police Department Collection – The Portal to Texas History". May 26, 2023. Archived from the original on October 9, 2009. Retrieved September 6, 2013.
- Tunheim, John R. (March 1, 1999). Final Report of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. DIANE Publishing. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-7881-7722-4.
- "Gallop: Most Americans Believe Oswald Conspired With Others to Kill JFK". Gallup.com. April 11, 2001. Archived from the original on January 8, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2012.
- Pontchartrain, Blake (June 17, 2019). "Blake Pontchartrain: Where was the French Hospital in New Orleans, and what's its story?". The Advocate. Archived from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2019.
- Child, Christopher C. (March 14, 2022). "Roosevelts without middle names". Vita Brevis. Archived from the original on May 25, 2022. Retrieved May 25, 2022.
- "Notable Tomb Tuesday – Robert E. Lee Oswald, father of Lee Harvey Oswald". Lucky Bean Tours. January 2, 2017. Archived from the original on September 22, 2017. Retrieved September 22, 2017.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 799, CE 1963, Schedule showing known addresses of Lee Harvey Oswald from the time of his birth Archived January 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
- "Robert Oswald, brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, dies at 83". Fort Worth Star Telegram. December 1, 2017. Archived from the original on December 12, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
- Vaughn, Beverly (November 30, 2017). "Obituaries Robert Edward Lee Oswald". Times Record News. Archived from the original on December 4, 2017. Retrieved July 18, 2024.
- ^ "Appendix 13: Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald". Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 1964. pp. 697, 699. Archived from the original on April 8, 2020. Retrieved September 2, 2017.
- ^ Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13 1964, pp. 674–675.
- "Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives". Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 1964. p. 378. Archived from the original on April 8, 2020. Retrieved September 2, 2017.
- Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13 1964, p. 676.
- "Testimony of John Edward Pic". Warren Commission Hearings. Archived from the original on March 8, 2006. Retrieved January 31, 2006.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 22, p. 687, CE 1382, Interview with Mrs. John Edward Pic Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
- Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13 1964, p. 677.
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Sources
- Mailer, Norman (2007) . Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Random House. ISBN 9781588365934.
- Posner, Gerald (1993), Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, Random House, ISBN 0-679-41825-3
- Summers, Anthony (1998), Not in Your Lifetime, New York: Marlowe & Company, ISBN 1-56924-739-0
Further reading
- Bugliosi, Vincent (2007). Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-04525-3.
- Epstein, Edward Jay (1978). Legend: the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. ISBN 0-07-019539-0.
- Ford, Gerald (1965). Portrait of the Assassin. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-82663-1.
- Gillon, Steven. Lee Harvey Oswald: 48 Hours to Live Sterling. 2013. ISBN 1454912510.
- McMillan, Priscilla Johnson. Marina and Lee Archived March 28, 2017, at the Wayback Machine New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
- Melanson, Philip H. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990, hardcover, ISBN 0-275-93571-X.
- Nechiporenko, Oleg M. Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993, ISBN 1-55972-210-X.
- Roffman, Howard. Presumed Guilty. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1976, hardcover, ISBN 0-498-01933-0.
- Sauvage, Leo (1966). The Oswald Affair. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company.
External links
- Frontline: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? Archived June 23, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- American Experience: Oswald's Ghost
- Lee Harvey Oswald: Lone Assassin or Patsy by John C. McAdams
- Lee Harvey Oswald Chronology by W. Tracy Parnell
- Abrahamsen, D. (1967). "A Study of Lee Harvey Oswald: Psychological Capability of Murder". Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. 43 (10): 861–888. PMC 1806829. PMID 19312773.
- Lee Harvey Oswald at IMDb
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