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Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy.txt Lee_Harvey_Oswald.txt
Assassination of John F. Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy was traveling with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, in a presidential motorcade. A ten-month investigation from November 1963 to September 1964 by the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial.  Kennedy's death marked the fourth and latest successful assassination of an American President. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became President upon Kennedy's death,  taking the constitutionally prescribed  oath of office onboard Air Force One at Dallas's Love Field airport before departing for Washington, D.C.

In contrast to the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded in 1979 that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". The HSCA agreed with the Warren Commission in that Kennedy's and Connally's injuries were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also determined the existence of additional gunshots based on analysis of an audio recording and therefore "... a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President". The Committee was not able to identify any individuals or groups involved with the conspiracy. In addition, the HSCA found that the original federal investigations were "seriously flawed" in respect of information-sharing and the possibility of conspiracy. As recommended by the HSCA, the acoustic evidence indicating conspiracy was subsequently re-examined and rejected. 

In light of the investigative reports determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the Justice Department has concluded active investigations, stating "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy".  However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Polling in 2013 showed that 60% of Americans believe that a group of conspirators was responsible for the assassination.  

Assassination 

Background 

John Fitzgerald Kennedy traveled to Texas in November 1963 in order to support his next reelection campaign for 1964 United States presidential elections.

Route to Dealey Plaza

President Kennedy's motorcade route through Dallas was planned to give him maximum exposure to Dallas crowds before his arrival,  along with Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally, at a luncheon with civic and business leaders in that city. The White House staff informed the Secret Service that the President would arrive in Dallas via a short flight from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth to Dallas Love Field airport.

The Dallas Trade Mart had been preliminarily selected for the luncheon and the final decision of the Trade Mart as the end of the motorcade journey was selected by President Kennedy's friend and appointments secretary Kenneth O'Donnell. Leaving from Dallas' Love Field, 45 minutes had been allotted for the motorcade to reach the Dallas Trade Mart at a planned arrival time of 12:15 p.m. The actual route was chosen to be a meandering 10-mile (16-km) route from Love Field to the Trade Mart, which could be driven slowly in the allotted time.

Special Agent Winston G. Lawson, a member of the White House detail who acted as the advance Secret Service Agent, and Secret Service Agent Forrest V. Sorrels, Special Agent In Charge of the Dallas office, were most active in planning the actual route. On November 14, Lawson and Sorrels attended a meeting at Love Field and drove over the route that Sorrels believed best suited for the motorcade. From Love Field, the route passed through a portion of suburban Dallas, through the downtown area along Main Street, and finally to the Trade Mart via a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway.

For the President's return to Love Field, from which he planned to depart for a fund-raising dinner in Austin later in the day, the agents selected a more direct route, which was approximately 4 miles, or 6.4 kilometers (some of this route would be used after the assassination). The planned route to the Trade Mart was widely reported in Dallas newspapers several days before the event, for the benefit of people who wished to view the motorcade.

To pass through downtown Dallas, a route west along Dallas' Main Street, rather than Elm Street (one block to the north) was chosen, because this was the traditional parade route, and provided the maximal building and crowd views. The Main Street route precluded a direct turn onto the Fort Worth Turnpike exit (which served also as the Stemmons Freeway exit), which was the route to the Trade Mart, because this exit was accessible only from Elm Street. The planned motorcade route thus included a short one-block turn at the end of the downtown segment of Main Street, onto Houston Street for one block northward, before turning again west onto Elm, in order to proceed through Dealey Plaza before exiting Elm onto the Stemmons Freeway. The Texas School Book Depository was situated at this corner of Houston and Elm. 

Three vehicles were used for secret service and police protection in the Dallas motorcade. The first car, an unmarked white Ford (hardtop), carried Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, Secret Service Agent Win Lawson, Sheriff Bill Decker and Dallas Field Agent Forrest Sorrels. The second car, a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible, held driver Agent Bill Greer, SAIC Roy Kellerman, Governor John Connally, Nellie Connally, President Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. 

The third car, a 1955 Cadillac convertible code-named "Halfback", contained driver Agent Sam Kinney, ATSAIC Emory Roberts, presidential aides Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers, driver Agent George Hickey and PRS agent Glen Bennett. Secret service agents Clint Hill, Jack Ready, Tim McIntyre and Paul Landis rode on the running boards. There was an AR-15 rifle in the third vehicle.

On November 22, after a breakfast speech in Fort Worth, where President Kennedy had stayed overnight after arriving from San Antonio, Houston, and Washington, D.C., the previous day,  the president boarded Air Force One, which departed at 11:10 and arrived at Love Field 15 minutes later. At about 11:40, the presidential motorcade left Love Field for the trip through Dallas, which was running on a schedule about 10 minutes longer than the planned 45 minutes, due to enthusiastic crowds estimated at 150,000–200,000 people, and two unplanned stops directed by the president.   By the time the motorcade reached Dealey Plaza they were only 5 minutes away from their planned destination.

The assassination 

Shooting in Dealey Plaza

At 12:30 p.m. CST, as President Kennedy's uncovered 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine entered Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally, then the First Lady of Texas, turned around to President Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you," which President Kennedy acknowledged by saying "No, you certainly can't." Those were the last words ever spoken by John F. Kennedy.   

From Houston Street, the presidential limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm Street, allowing it access to the Stemmons Freeway exit. As it turned on Elm, the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository. Shots were fired at President Kennedy as they continued down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. 

A minority of the witnesses recognized the first gunshot they heard as weapon fire, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many later said they heard what they first thought to be a firecracker, or the exhaust backfire of a vehicle, just after the President started waving.  

Within one second of each other, President Kennedy, Governor Connally, and Mrs. Kennedy, all turned abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right, between Zapruder film frames 155 and 169.  Connally, like the President a World War II military veteran (and, unlike him, a longtime hunter), testified he immediately recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle, then he turned his head and torso rightward, attempting to see President Kennedy behind him. Governor Connally testified he could not see the President, so he then started to turn forward again (turning from his right to his left). Connally testified that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, he was hit in his upper right back by a bullet he did not hear fired. The doctor who operated on Connally measured his head at the time he was hit as turned 27 degrees left of center. After Connally was hit he shouted, "Oh, no, no, no. My God. They're going to kill us all!" 

Mrs. Connally testified that just after hearing a loud, frightening noise that came from somewhere behind her and to her right, she turned toward President Kennedy and saw him with his arms and elbows raised high, with his hands in front of his face and throat. She then heard another gunshot and then Governor Connally yelling. Mrs. Connally then turned away from President Kennedy toward her husband, at which point another gunshot sounded and she and the limousine's rear interior were covered with fragments of skull, blood, and brain.

According to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as President Kennedy waved to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo, a shot entered his upper back, penetrated his neck, slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung, and exited his throat nearly centerline just beneath his larynx, nicking the left side of his suit tie knot. He raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and left. Mrs. Kennedy, facing him, then put her arms around him in concern. 

Governor Connally also reacted after the same bullet penetrated his back just below his right armpit, creating an oval entry wound, impacted and destroyed four inches of his right fifth rib, exited his chest just below his right nipple, creating a two-and-a-half inch oval sucking-air chest wound, entered his arm just above his right wrist, cleanly shattered his right radius bone into eight pieces, exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm, and finally lodged in his left inner thigh. The Warren Commission theorized that the "single bullet" (see single-bullet theory) struck sometime between Zapruder frames 210 to 225, while the House Select Committee theorized that it struck exactly at Zapruder frame 190. 

According to the Warren Commission, a second shot struck the President at Zapruder film frame 313. The Commission made no conclusion as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired. The presidential limousine was then passing in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure. Each body concluded that the second shot to hit the president entered the rear of his head (the House Select Committee placed the entry wound four inches higher than the Warren Commission placed it) and, passing in fragments through his head, created a large, "roughly ovular" [sic] hole on the rear, right side. The president's blood and fragments of his scalp, brain, and skull landed on the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass windshield and raised sun visors, the front engine hood, the rear trunk lid, the followup Secret Service car and its driver's left arm, and motorcycle officers riding on both sides of the President behind him.  

United States Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of the follow-up car, which was immediately behind the Presidential limousine. Hill testified that he heard one shot, then, as documented in other films and concurrent with Zapruder frame 308, he jumped off into Elm Street and ran forward to try to get on the limousine and protect the President. (Hill testified to the Warren Commission that after he jumped into Elm Street, he heard two more shots.) 

After the President had been shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy began to climb out onto the back of the limousine, though she later had no recollection of doing so.  Hill believed she was reaching for something, perhaps a piece of the President's skull. He jumped onto the back of the limousine while at the same time Mrs. Kennedy returned to her seat, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and accelerated, speeding to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

After Mrs. Kennedy crawled back into her limousine seat, both Governor Connally and Mrs. Connally heard her say more than once, "They have killed my husband," and "I have his brains in my hand." In a long-redacted interview for Life magazine days later, Mrs. Kennedy recalled, "All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him saying, 'Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack.' I kept holding the top of his head down trying to keep the ..." The President's widow could not finish her sentence. 

Others wounded

Governor Connally, riding in the same limousine in a seat in front of the President and three inches more to the left than the President, was also critically injured but survived. Doctors later stated that after the Governor was shot, his wife pulled him onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung).

James Tague, a spectator and witness to the assassination, also received a minor wound to his right cheek while standing 531 ft away from the Depository's sixth floor, easternmost window, 270 ft in front of and slightly to the right of President Kennedy's head facing direction, and more than 16 ft below the top of the President's head. Tague's injury occurred when a bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. A deputy sheriff noticed some blood on Tague's cheek, and Tague realized something had stung his face during the shooting. When Tague pointed to where he had been standing, the police officer noticed a bullet smear on a nearby curb. Nine months later the FBI removed the curb, and a spectrographic analysis revealed metallic residue consistent with that of the lead core in Oswald's ammunition.  When Tague testified to the Warren Commission and was asked which of the three shots he remembered hearing struck him, he stated it was the second or third shot. When the Warren Commission attorney pressed him further, Tague stated he was struck concurrent with the second shot. 

Aftermath in Dealey Plaza

The presidential limousine was passing a grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street at the moment of the fatal head shot. As the motorcade left the plaza, police officers and spectators ran up the knoll and from a railroad bridge over Elm Street (the triple underpass), to the area behind a five-foot (1.5 m) high stockade fence atop the knoll, separating it from a parking lot. No sniper was found.  S. M. Holland, who had been watching the motorcade on the triple underpass, testified that "immediately" after the shots were fired, he went around the corner where the overpass joined the fence, but did not see anyone running from the area.  

Lee Bowers, a railroad switchman sitting in a two-story tower, had an unobstructed view of the rear of the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll during the shooting.  He saw a total of four men in the area between his tower and Elm Street: a middle-aged man and a younger man, standing 10 to apart near the triple underpass, who did not seem to know each other, and one or two uniformed parking lot attendants. At the time of the shooting, he saw "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around", which he could not identify. Bowers testified that one or both of the men were still there when motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood ran up the grassy knoll to the back of the fence.  In a 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired.  

Meanwhile, Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, notified police that as he watched the motorcade go by, he heard a shot come from above, and looked up to see a man with a rifle make another shot from a corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking out 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." 

As Brennan spoke to the police in front of the building, they were joined by Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr.,  two employees of the Texas School Book Depository who had watched the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the fifth floor.  Norman reported that he heard three gunshots come from directly over their heads.  Norman also heard the sounds of a bolt-action rifle and cartridges dropping on the floor above them. 

Estimates of when Dallas police sealed off the entrances to the Texas School Book Depository range from 12:33 to after 12:50 p.m.  

Of the 104 earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza who are on record with an opinion as to the direction from which the shots came, 54 (51.9%) thought that all shots came from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, 33 (31.7%) thought that all shots came from the area of the grassy knoll or the triple underpass, 9 (8.7%) thought all shots came from a location entirely distinct from the knoll or the Depository, 5 (4.8%) thought they heard shots from two locations, and 3 (2.9%) thought the shots came from a direction consistent with both the knoll and the Depository. 

Additionally, the Warren Commission said of the three shots they concluded were fired that "a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together."

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald, reported missing to the Dallas police by Roy Truly, his supervisor at the Depository,  was arrested approximately 70 minutes after the assassination for the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. According to witness Helen Markam, Tippit had spotted Oswald walking along a sidewalk in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff,  three miles from Dealey Plaza. Officer Tippit had earlier received a radio message that gave a description of the suspect being sought in the assassination and called Oswald over to the patrol car.

Helen Markam testified that after an exchange of words, Tippit got out of his car and Oswald shot him four times. Oswald was next seen by shoe store manager Johnny Brewer "ducking into" the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip into the nearby Texas Theatre without paying.  Brewer alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned the police  at about 1:40 p.m.

According to one of the arresting officers, M.N. McDonald, Oswald resisted arrest and was attempting to draw his pistol when he was struck and forcibly restrained by the police.  He was charged with the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit later that night.  Oswald denied shooting anyone and claimed he was a patsy who was arrested because he had lived in the Soviet Union.   

Oswald's case never came to trial because two days later, while being escorted to a car for transfer from Dallas Police Headquarters to the Dallas County Jail, he was shot and mortally wounded by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, live on American television at 11:21 a.m. CST on Sunday, November 24. He was taken unconscious by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where doctors had tried to save President Kennedy's life two days earlier, and died at 1:07 p.m.  Oswald's death was announced on a TV news broadcast by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry. An autopsy was performed by the Dallas County Medical Examiner at 2:45 p.m. the same day. The stated cause of death in the autopsy report was "hemorrhage secondary to gunshot wound of the chest".  Arrested immediately after the shooting, Ruby later said that he had been distraught over the Kennedy assassination and that killing Oswald would spare "... Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial." 

Carcano rifle

An Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle (see 6.5×52mm Mannlicher–Carcano cartridge) was found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository by Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone soon after the assassination of President Kennedy.  The recovery was filmed by Tom Alyea of WFAA-TV.

This footage shows the rifle to be a Carcano, and it was later verified by photographic analysis commissioned by the HSCA that the rifle filmed was the same one later identified as the assassination weapon.  Compared to photographs taken of Oswald holding the rifle in his backyard, "one notch in the stock at [a] point that appears very faintly in the photograph" matched, as well as the rifle's dimensions.

The previous March, the Carcano rifle had been bought by Oswald under the name "A. Hidell" and delivered to a post-office box Oswald rented in Dallas. According to the Warren Commission Report, a partial palm print of Oswald was also found on the barrel of the gun,  and a tuft of fibers found in a crevice of the rifle was consistent with the fibers and colors of the shirt Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest. 

A bullet found on Governor Connally's hospital gurney, and two bullet fragments found in the Presidential limousine, were ballistically matched to this rifle.

President Kennedy declared dead in the emergency room

The staff at Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room 1 who treated President Kennedy observed that his condition was "moribund" (a mortal wound), meaning that he had no chance of survival upon arriving at the hospital. George Burkley,  the President's personal physician, stated that a gunshot wound to the skull was the cause of death. Burkley signed President Kennedy's death certificate.

At 1:00 p.m., CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity had ceased and after Father Oscar Huber  had administered the last rites, the President was pronounced dead. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. President Kennedy's death was officially announced by White House Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at 1:33 p.m. CST (19:33 UTC).  Kilduff was acting press secretary on the trip because Pierre Salinger was traveling to Japan with half the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk.    Governor Connally, meanwhile, was taken to emergency surgery, where he underwent two operations that day.

As members of the President's security detail attempted to remove Kennedy's body from the hospital, they briefly scuffled with Dallas officials, including Dallas County Coroner Earl Rose who believed he was legally obligated to perform an autopsy before Kennedy's body was removed. The Secret Service pushed through and Rose eventually stepped aside. The forensic panel of the HSCA, of which Rose was a member, later reported that Texas law indicated that it was the responsibility of the justice of the peace to determine the cause of death as well as the necessity of whether an autopsy was needed to determine the cause of death.  Theran Ward, a justice of the peace in Dallas County, signed the official record of inquest as well as a second certificate of death. 

A few minutes after 2:00 p.m. CST (20:00 UTC), President Kennedy's body was taken from Parkland Hospital and driven to Air Force One. The casket was then loaded aboard the airplane through the rear door, where it remained at the rear of the passenger compartment, in place of a removed row of seats. Lyndon B. Johnson, who as Vice President, became President upon Kennedy's death,  and had been riding two cars behind President Kennedy in the motorcade, refused to leave for Washington without President Kennedy and his widow.

At 2:38 p.m. CST (20:38 UTC), President Johnson took the oath of office on board Air Force One just before it departed from Love Field, with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.

Autopsy

The autopsy was performed, beginning at about 8 p.m. and ending at about midnight EST at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The choice of autopsy hospital in the Washington, D.C., area was made at the request of Mrs. Kennedy, on the basis that John F. Kennedy had been a naval officer. 

Funeral

The state funeral took place in Washington, D.C., during the three days that followed the assassination. 

The body of President Kennedy was brought back to Washington, D.C., and placed in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours.   On the Sunday after the assassination, his coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the U.S. Capitol to lie in state.  Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket.  Representatives from over 90 countries attended the state funeral on Monday, November 25.  After the Requiem Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, the late President was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Recordings of the assassination

No radio or television stations broadcast the assassination live because the area through which the motorcade was traveling was not considered important enough for a live broadcast. Most media crews were not even with the motorcade but were waiting instead at the Dallas Trade Mart in anticipation of President Kennedy's arrival. Those members of the media who were with the motorcade were riding at the rear of the procession.

The Dallas police were recording their radio transmissions over two channels. A frequency designated as Channel One was used for routine police communications; Channel Two was an auxiliary channel dedicated to the President's motorcade. Up until the time of the assassination, most of the broadcasts on the second channel consisted of Police Chief Jesse Curry's announcements of the location of the motorcade as it wound through the city.

President Kennedy's last seconds traveling through Dealey Plaza were recorded on silent 8 mm film for the 26.6 seconds before, during, and immediately following the assassination. This famous film footage was taken by garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman Abraham Zapruder, in what became known as the Zapruder film. Frame enlargements from the Zapruder film were published by Life magazine shortly after the assassination. The footage was first shown publicly as a film at the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, and on television in 1975.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1999 an arbitration panel ordered the U.S. government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs for giving the film to the National Archives. The complete film, which lasts for 26 seconds, was valued at $16 million.  

Zapruder was not the only person who photographed at least part of the assassination; a total of 32 photographers were in Dealey Plaza. Amateur movies taken by Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore (shown on television in New York on November 26, 1963),    and photographer Charles Bronson captured the fatal shot, although at a greater distance than Zapruder. Other motion picture films were taken in Dealey Plaza at or around the time of the shooting by Robert Hughes, F. Mark Bell, Elsie Dorman, John Martin Jr., Patsy Paschall, Tina Towner, James Underwood, Dave Wiegman, Mal Couch, Thomas Atkins, and an unknown woman in a blue dress on the south side of Elm Street. 

Still photos were taken by Phillip Willis, Mary Ann Moorman, Hugh W. Betzner Jr., Wilma Bond, Robert Croft, and many others. The lone professional photographer in Dealey Plaza who was not in the press cars was Ike Altgens, photo editor for the Associated Press in Dallas.

An unidentified woman, nicknamed the Babushka Lady by researchers, might have been filming the Presidential motorcade during the assassination. She was seen apparently doing so on film and in photographs taken by the others.

Previously unknown color footage filmed on the assassination day by George Jefferies was released on February 19, 2007 by the Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas, Texas.   The film does not include the shooting, having been taken roughly 90 seconds beforehand and a couple of blocks away. The only detail relevant to the investigation of the assassination is a clear view of President Kennedy's bunched suit jacket, just below the collar, which has led to different calculations about how low in the back President Kennedy was first shot (see discussion above).

Official investigations

Dallas Police

After arresting Oswald and collecting physical evidence at the crime scenes, the Dallas Police held Oswald at the police headquarters for interrogation. Oswald was questioned all afternoon about both the Tippit shooting and the assassination of the President. He was questioned intermittently for approximately 12 hours between 2:30 p.m., on November 22, and 11 a.m., on November 24. Throughout this interrogation Oswald denied any involvement with either the assassination of President Kennedy or the murder of Patrolman Tippit. Captain Fritz of the homicide and robbery bureau did most of the questioning, keeping only rudimentary notes.  Days later, he wrote a report of the interrogation from notes he made afterwards.  There were no stenographic or tape recordings. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also present, including the FBI and the Secret Service, and occasionally participated in the questioning. Several of the FBI agents present wrote contemporaneous reports of the interrogation. 

During the evening of November 22, the Dallas Police Department performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an apparent effort to determine, by means of a scientific test, whether Oswald had recently fired a weapon. The results were positive for the hands and negative for the right cheek. Because of the unreliability of these tests, the Warren Commission did not rely on the results of the test in making their findings.

Oswald provided little information during his questioning. When confronted with evidence that he could not explain he resorted to statements that were found to be false.  Dallas authorities were not able to complete their investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy because of interruptions from the FBI and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby.

FBI investigation

The FBI was the first authority to complete an investigation. On December 9, 1963, the FBI issued a report and gave it to the Warren Commission.

The FBI stated that three bullets were fired during the Kennedy assassination; the Warren Commission agreed with the FBI investigation that three shots were fired but disagreed with the FBI report on which shots hit Kennedy and which hit Governor Connally. The FBI report claimed that the first shot hit President Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit President Kennedy in the head, killing him. In contrast, the Warren Commission concluded that one of the three shots missed, one of the shots hit President Kennedy and then struck Governor Connally, and a third shot struck President Kennedy in the head, killing him.

Warren Commission

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 29, 1963, by President Johnson to investigate the assassination.  Its 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964,  and made public three days later.  It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of President Kennedy and the wounding of Texas Governor John Connally,  and that Jack Ruby also acted alone in the murder of Oswald.  The Commission's findings have since proven controversial and been both challenged and supported by later studies.

The Commission took its unofficial name, "The Warren Commission", from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission, and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance.  One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears ultimately proved valid.

All of the Warren Commission's records were submitted to the National Archives in 1964. The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years (to 2039) under a general National Archives policy that applied to all federal investigations by the executive branch of government, a period "intended to serve as protection for innocent persons who could otherwise be damaged because of their relationship with participants in the case".  The 75-year rule no longer exists, supplanted by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the JFK Records Act of 1992.

Ramsey Clark Panel

In 1968, a panel of four medical experts appointed by Attorney General Ramsey Clark met in Washington, D.C., to examine various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence about the death of President Kennedy. The Clark Panel determined 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 upper right side. 

Rockefeller Commission

The United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the CIA within the United States. The commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission.

Part of the commission's work dealt with the Kennedy assassination, specifically the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown to the general public in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas.  The commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Sturgis was in Dallas at the time of the assassination. 

Church Committee

Church Committee is the common term referring to the 1975 United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, to investigate the illegal intelligence gathering by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the Watergate incident. It also investigated the CIA and FBI conduct relating to the JFK assassination.

Their report concluded that the investigation on the assassination by FBI and CIA were fundamentally deficient and the facts that have greatly affected the investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies. It also found that the FBI, the agency with primary responsibility on the matter, was ordered by Director Hoover and pressured by unnamed higher government officials to conclude its investigation quickly.  The report hinted that there was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information. 

United States House Select Committee on Assassinations

As a result of increasing public and congressional skepticism regarding the Warren Commission's findings and the transparency of government agencies, House Resolution 1540 was passed in September 1976, creating the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr..

The Committee investigated until 1978, and in March 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. While one of the reasons for that finding of "probable conspiracy" was a since-discredited acoustic analysis of a police channel dictabelt recording, the HSCA also commissioned numerous other scientific studies of acoustic analysis that corroborate the Warren Commission's findings. The Committee concluded that previous investigations into Oswald's responsibility were "thorough and reliable" but they did not adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy, and that Federal agencies performed with "varying degrees of competency". Specifically, the FBI and CIA were found to be deficient in sharing information with other agencies and the Warren Commission. Instead of furnishing all information relevant to the investigation, the FBI and CIA only responded to specific requests and were still occasionally inadequate. Furthermore, the Secret Service did not properly analyze information it possessed prior to the assassination and was inadequately prepared to protect the President.

Concerning the conclusions of "probable conspiracy", four of the twelve committee members wrote dissenting opinions. In accordance with the recommendations of the HSCA, the Dictabelt recording and acoustic evidence of a second assassin was subsequently reexamined. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and a specially appointed National Academy of Sciences Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman,"  the Justice Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy".

Although the final report and supporting volumes of the HSCA was publicly released, the working papers and primary documents were sealed until 2029 under Congressional rules and only partially released as part of the 1992 JFK Act. 

The JFK Act and Assassination Records Review Board

In 1992, the popular but controversial movie JFK had renewed public interest in the assassination and particularly in the still-classified documents referenced in the film's postscript. Largely in response to the film, Congress passed the JFK Act, or "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992". The goal of the legislation was to collect at the National Archives and make publicly available all of the assassination-related records held by federal and state government agencies, private citizens and various other organizations.

The JFK Act also mandated the creation of an independent office, the Assassination Records Review Board, to review the submitted records for completeness and continued secrecy. The Review Board was not commissioned to make any findings or conclusions regarding the assassination, just to collect and release all related documents. From 1994 until 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board gathered and unsealed about 60,000 documents, consisting of over 4 million pages.   Government agencies requested that some records remain classified and these were reviewed under section 6 criteria of the JFK Act. There were 29,420 such records and all of them were fully or partially released, with stringent requirements for redaction.

All remaining assassination-related records (approximately 5,000 pages) are scheduled to be released by October 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by the President under the following conditions:
(1) "continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations" and (2) "the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure." There is some concern among researchers that significant records, particularly those of the CIA, may still remain classified after 2017.  Although these documents may include interesting historical information, all of the records were examined by the Review Board and were not determined to impact the facts of the Kennedy assassination.

Conspiracy theories

There are numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. These theories posit that the assassination involved people or organizations other than Lee Harvey Oswald. Most current theories put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Johnson, Cuban President Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of those entities.  Some conspiracy theories claim that the United States government covered up crucial information in the aftermath of the assassination.

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that only Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. Subsequent investigations confirmed most of the conclusions of the Commission. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that a second gunman besides Oswald probably fired at Kennedy. The HSCA did not identify the second gunman, nor did it identify any other person or organization as having been involved.   The acoustical evidence that the HSCA based its second gunman conclusion on has since been discredited.     

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Gallup polls have also found that only 20–30% of the population believe that Oswald had acted alone. These polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved.  Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused in various Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. 

Reaction to the assassination

The assassination evoked stunned reactions worldwide. Before the President's death was announced, the first hour after the shooting was a time of great confusion. Taking place during the Cold War, it was at first unclear whether the shooting might be part of a larger attack upon the U.S., and whether Vice President Johnson, who had been riding two cars behind in the motorcade, was safe.

The news shocked the nation. People wept openly and gathered in department stores to watch the television coverage, while others prayed. Traffic in some areas came to a halt as the news spread from car to car.  Schools across the U.S. dismissed their students early.  Anger against Texas and Texans was reported from some individuals. Various Cleveland Browns fans, for example, carried signs at the next Sunday's home game against the Dallas Cowboys decrying the city of Dallas as having "killed the President".  

The event left a lasting impression on many Americans. As with the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor before it and the September 11 attacks after it, asking "Where were you when you heard about President Kennedy's assassination" would become a common topic of discussion.   

Artifacts, museums and locations today

The plane serving as Air Force One is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, where tours of the aircraft are offered including the rear of the aircraft where President Kennedy's casket was placed and the location where Mrs. Kennedy stood in her blood-stained pink dress while Vice President Johnson was sworn in as president. The 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine is at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. 

Equipment from the trauma room at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President Kennedy was pronounced dead, including a gurney, was purchased by the federal government from the hospital in 1973 and is now stored by the National Archives at an underground facility in Lenexa, Kansas. The First Lady's pink suit, the autopsy report, X-rays and President Kennedy's blood-stained jacket, shirt and tie worn during the assassination are stored in the National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland, with access controlled by a representative of the Kennedy family. The rifle used by Oswald, his diary, revolver, bullet fragments, and the windshield of Kennedy's limousine are also stored by the Archives. The Lincoln Catafalque, which President Kennedy's coffin rested on while he lay in state in the Capitol, is on display at the United States Capitol Visitor Center. 

The three-acre park within Dealey Plaza, the buildings facing it, the overpass, and a portion of the adjacent railyard – including the railroad switching tower – were designated part of the Dealey Plaza Historic District by the National Park Service on October 12, 1993. Much of the area is accessible to visitors, including the park and grassy knoll. Though still an active city street, the approximate spot where the presidential limousine was located at the time of the shooting is marked with an X on the street.  The Texas School Book Depository now draws over 325,000 visitors each year to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza operated by the Dallas County Historical Foundation. There is a re-creation of the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the building. 

At the Historic Auto Attractions museum in Roscoe, Illinois, are permanently displayed items related to the assassination such as the catalogue Oswald used to order the rifle, a hat and jacket that belonged to Jack Ruby and the shoes he wore when he shot Oswald, and a window from the Texas School Book Depository. The Texas State Archives have the clothes Governor Connally wore on November 22, 1963.

Some items were intentionally destroyed by the U.S. government at the direction of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, such as the casket used to transport President Kennedy's body aboard Air Force One from Dallas to Washington, which was dropped by the Air Force into the sea as "its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy".  Other items such as the hat worn by Jack Ruby the day he shot Lee Harvey Oswald and the toe tag on Oswald's corpse are in the hands of private collectors and have sold for tens of thousands of dollars at auctions.

Jack Ruby's gun, owned by his brother Earl Ruby, was sold by the Herman Darvick Autograph Auctions in New York City on December 26, 1991, for $220,000. Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was an American sniper who assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. According to five U.S. government investigations,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. Oswald shot and killed Kennedy as Kennedy traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in the city of Dallas, Texas.

Oswald was a former U.S. Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. He lived in the Belarusian city of Minsk until June 1962, at which time he returned to the United States with his Russian wife, eventually settling in Dallas.

Following Kennedy's assassination, Oswald was initially arrested for the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit, who was killed on a Dallas street approximately 45 minutes after President Kennedy was shot. Oswald was later charged with the murder of Kennedy; he denied shooting anybody, saying that he was a patsy.   Two days later, while being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail, Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby in full view of television cameras broadcasting live.

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy, firing three shots. This conclusion was supported by previous investigations carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and Dallas Police Department.   Despite forensic, ballistic, and eyewitness evidence supporting the lone gunman theory, public opinion polls taken over the years have shown that most Americans believe that Oswald did not act alone, but conspired with others to kill the president,  and the assassination has spawned numerous conspiracy theories. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy, but differed from previous investigations in concluding that "scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy".   The House Select Committee's acoustical evidence has since been discredited. 

Early life

Childhood

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939,  to World War I veteran Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. (March 4, 1896 – August 19, 1939)  and Marguerite Frances Claverie (July 19, 1907 – January 17, 1981).  Robert had died of a heart attack at age 43 two months prior to Lee's birth. Lee's elder brother Robert Jr. (born April 7, 1934) is also a former Marine. Through Marguerite's first marriage to Edward John Pic, Jr., Lee and Robert Jr. are the half-brothers of Air Force veteran John Edward Pic (January 17, 1932 – April 25, 2000).  

In 1944, Marguerite moved the family from New Orleans to Dallas, Texas. Oswald entered the 1st grade in 1945 and over the next half-dozen years attended several different schools in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas through the 6th grade. Oswald took an IQ test in the 4th grade and scored 103; "on achievement tests in [grades 4 to 6], he twice did best in reading and twice did worst in spelling."

As a child, Oswald was described by several people who knew him as withdrawn and temperamental.  In August 1952, when Oswald was 12, 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 the 7th 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 [Oswald] tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations." Dr. Hartogs detected a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies" and recommended continued treatment. 

In January 1954, Oswald's mother returned to New Orleans, taking Oswald with her. At the time, there was a question pending before a New York judge as to whether Oswald should be removed from the care of his mother to finish his schooling, 
although Oswald's behavior appeared to improve during his last months in New York.  

In New Orleans, Oswald completed the 8th and 9th grades. He entered the 10th 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 10th 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 (see below); he never received a high school diploma.

By the age of 17, he had resided at 22 different locations and attended 12 different schools.
The schools were: 
* 1st grade: Benbrook Common School (Fort Worth, Texas), October 31, 1945
* 1st grade (again): Covington Elementary School (Covington, Louisiana), Sep. 1946–Jan. 1947
* 1st grade (end): Clayton Public School (Ft Worth, TX), Jan.–May 1947
* 2nd grade: Clayton Public School (Ft Worth, TX), Sept. 1947
* 2nd grade (end): Clark Elementary School (Ft Worth, TX), March 1948
* 3rd grade: Arlington Heights Elementary School (Ft Worth, TX), Sept. 1948
* 4th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (since renamed Luella Merrett, Ft Worth), Sep. 1949
* 5th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (Ft Worth), Sep. 1950
* 6th grade: Ridglea West Elementary School (Ft Worth), Sep. 1951
* 7th grade: Trinity Evangelical Lutheran School (Bronx, NYC, NY), Aug. 1952
* 7th grade: Public School 117 (Bronx, NY), Sep. 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), Sep 14, 1953
* 8th grade (end): Beauregard Junior High School (New Orleans), Jan 13, 1954
* 9th grade: Beauregard Junior High School (New Orleans), Sep. 1954–June 1955
* 10th grade: Warren Easton High School (New Orleans), Sep.–Oct. 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), Sep.–Oct. 1956. Final withdrawal from high school, 10th grade. (Warren appendix 13)

Though the young Oswald had trouble spelling and may have had a "reading-spelling disability", he read voraciously. By age 15, he claimed to be a Marxist, writing 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." 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." 
However, Edward Voebel, "whom the Warren Commission had established was Oswald's closest friend during his teenage years in New Orleans..... said that 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 attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans. Oswald's fellow cadets recalled him attending C.A.P. meetings "three or four" times, or "10 or 12 times" over a one- or two-month period.   

Marine Corps

Oswald enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on October 24, 1956, just after his seventeenth birthday. Because he was underage, his brother Robert Jr. signed the forms as his guardian. Oswald also named his mother and his half-brother John as beneficiaries. Oswald idolized his older brother Robert Jr.; a photograph taken after Lee Harvey's arrest by Dallas police shows him wearing his brother's 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 record his vital statistics as 5 ft in height, 135 lb in weight, with hazel eyes and brown hair. His primary training was radar operation, a position requiring a security clearance. A May 1957 document states 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 Biloxi, 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 then departed for Japan the following month, where he was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1 near Tokyo.

Like all Marines, Oswald was trained and tested in shooting and he scored 212 in December 1956, 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 accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 handgun, then court-martialed again for fighting with a sergeant who he thought was responsible for his punishment in the shooting matter. He was demoted from private first class to private and briefly imprisoned in the brig. He was later punished for a third incident: while on 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; he was also called Oswaldskovich  because he espoused pro-Soviet sentiments. In November 1958, Oswald transferred back to El Toro  where his unit's function "was to serveil  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 in the Marines, Oswald made an effort to teach himself rudimentary Russian. Although this was an unusual endeavor, in February 1959, he was invited to take a Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken Russian. His level at the time was rated "poor."  On September 11, 1959, he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his mother needed care, and was put on reserve.  

Adult life and early crimes

Defection to the Soviet Union

In October 1959, just before turning 20, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union, a trip he planned well in advance. Along with his self-taught Russian, he had saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 22, p. 705, CE 1385, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/html/WH_Vol22_0366a.htm Notes of interview of Lee Harvey Oswald 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 2 years and 10 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, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/wc/contents_wh26.htm Certified military pay records for Lee Harvey Oswald for the period October 24, 1956, to September 11, 1959].

Oswald spent two days with his mother in Fort Worth, then embarked by ship from New Orleans on September 20 to Le Havre, France, and immediately proceeded to the United Kingdom. Arriving in Southampton on October 9, he told officials he had $700 and planned to remain in the United Kingdom for one week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. However, on the same day, he flew to Helsinki, where 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.

Almost immediately after arriving, Oswald told 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'".Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 16, p. 94, CE 24, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0059b.htm Lee Harvey Oswald's "Historic Diary"], entries of October 16, 1959 to October 21, 1959. 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 until October 28, 1959.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 16, p. 95, CE 24, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0060a.htm Lee Harvey Oswald's "Historic Diary"], entries of October 21, 1959 to October 28, 1959.

According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials that same day, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States; he insisted to them 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.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 16, p. 96, CE 24, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0060b.htm Lee Harvey Oswald's "Historic Diary"], entries of October 28, 1959 to October 31, 1959.

On October 31, Oswald appeared at the United States embassy in Moscow, declaring a desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship.   "I have made up my mind," he said; "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 Associated Press story of the defection of a former U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported on the front pages of some newspapers in 1959.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id
IrwyAAAAIBAJ&sjid4eoFAAAAIBAJ&pg
3310,5481990&dqlee+oswald+russia&hl
en "Texas Marine Gives Up U.S. For Russia"], The Miami News, October 31, 1959, p1

Though Oswald had wanted to attend Moscow State University, he was sent to Minsk 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, was also engaged by Gorizont at the time, and was assigned to teach Oswald Russian.  Oswald received a government-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay—all in all, an idyllic existence by working-class Soviet standards,  though he was kept under constant surveillance. 

From approximately June 1960 to February 1961, Oswald had a relationship with Ella German, a co-worker at the factory. He proposed marriage to her at the beginning of 1961 but she refused with the explanation that she did not love him and was afraid to marry an American. Some researchers believe that German's rejection of Oswald's marriage proposal may have had much to do with his disillusionment with life in the Soviet Union and his decision to return to the United States.  

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 U.S. Embassy in Moscow requesting 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 Nikolayevna Prusakova, a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married less than six weeks later in April.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. 
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 enabling her to immigrate to the U.S. and, 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 no attention from the press, much to Oswald's disappointment. 

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.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, p. 123, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh11/html/WC_Vol11_0067a.htm Affidavit of Alexander Kleinlerer]: "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."

Although the Russian émigrés eventually abandoned Marina when she made no sign of leaving Lee,  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 was to tell the Warren Commission that Oswald had a "remarkable fluency in Russian."  Marina, meanwhile, befriended Ruth Paine,  a Quaker who was 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 in Dallas; he disliked the work and quit after three months. In October, he was hired by 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. 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...' Oswald was fired during the first week of April 1963. 
Some have suggested that Oswald might have used equipment at the firm to forge identification documents.  

Edwin Walker assassination attempt

In March 1963, Oswald purchased a 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle by mail-order, using the alias "A. Hidell", as well as a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver by the same method.  On April 10, 1963, Oswald attempted to kill retired U.S. Major General Edwin Walker, firing that rifle at Walker through a window, from less than 100 ft 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 Kennedy, but a grand jury refused 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 not found until 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.United States House Select Committee on Assassinations,

[http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscaguin.htm Testimony of Dr. Vincent P. Guinn]:
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.

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 George's wife Jeanne was asked about Oswald's reaction, she said, "I didn't notice anything"; she 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 next month in May.  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." 

On May 26, Oswald wrote to the New York City headquarters of the pro-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 Lee Oswald's wife Marina, Lee told her to sign the name "A.J. Hidell" as chapter president on his membership card.

On August 5 and 6, according to anti-Castro militant Carlos Bringuier, Oswald visited him 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 stated 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, a local TV station.  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 Embassy,  claiming he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union. The Cuban embassy officials insisted Oswald would need Soviet approval, but he was unable to get prompt co-operation from the Soviet embassy.

After five days of shuttling between consulates—that included 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 [Oswald] 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 in fact visited the consulates, but the Committee could not rule out the possibility that someone else had used his name in visiting the consulates. 

Return to Dallas

On October 2, 1963, Oswald left Mexico City by bus and arrived in Dallas the next day. Ruth Paine said that her neighbor told her, on October 14, that there was 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 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, but commuted to and from Dallas on Mondays and Fridays with his co-worker Wesley Frazier. On October 20, the Oswalds' second daughter, Audrey, was born.

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 2 to 3 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" [signed] "Lee Harvey Oswald." The note allegedly contained some sort of 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

In the days before Kennedy's arrival, several newspapers described the route of the presidential motorcade as passing the Book Depository.  On November 21 (a Thursday) Oswald asked Frazier for an unusual mid-week lift back to Irving, saying he had to pick up some curtain rods. The next morning (Friday) he returned to Dallas with Frazier; he left behind $170 and his wedding ring,  but took with him a paper bag. Frazier reported that Oswald told him the bag contained curtain rods,   The evidence demonstrated that the package actually contained the rifle used by Oswald in the assassination.        

Oswald's co-worker, Charles Givens, testified to the Commission that he last saw Oswald on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at approximately 11:55 a.m.—35 minutes before the assassination.Warren Commission Hearings, [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/givens1.htm Testimony of Charles Givens]. The Commission report stated that Oswald was not seen again "until after the shooting."  However, 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 later saw Oswald reading a newspaper in the first floor domino room at 11:50 a.m.   William Shelley, a foreman at the Depository, also testified that he saw Oswald on the first floor talking on the telephone 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 on the sixth floor of the Depository eating his lunch 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 felt he was the only one up there.  However, he also said that some boxes in the southeast corner may have prevented him from seeing deep into the "sniper's nest."  Carolyn Arnold, the secretary to the Vice President of the TSBD, informed the FBI that as she left the building to watch the motorcade, she caught a glimpse of a man whom she believed to be Oswald standing in the first floor hallway of the building just prior to the assassination. In 1978, Arnold told author Anthony Summers that the FBI report misquoted her, and that she "clearly" saw Oswald sitting in the second floor lunchroom at 12:15 p.m or slightly after. However, no other depository employee reported seeing Oswald on the second floor between 12 noon and 12:30 pm  (e.g., [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/html/WH_Vol22_0351b.htm Mrs. Pauline Sanders], who left the second floor lunchroom at "approximately 12:20 pm," did not see Oswald at all that day).

As Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dallas's Dealey Plaza at about 12:30 p.m. on November 22, Oswald fired three rifle shots from the sixth-floor, southeast corner window of the Book Depository,  killing the President and seriously wounding Texas Governor John Connally. One shot apparently missed the presidential limousine entirely, another struck Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, and another struck Kennedy in the head. Bystander James Tague received a minor facial injury from a small piece of curbstone that fragmented when struck by one of the bullets.

Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, notified police that as he watched the motorcade go by, he heard a shot come from above, and looked up to see a man with a rifle make another shot from a corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking out 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." 

According to the investigations, after the attack, Oswald hid and covered the rifle with boxes and descended using the rear stairwell. About ninety seconds after the shooting, in the second-floor lunchroom, Oswald encountered police officer Marrion Baker accompanied by Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly; Baker let Oswald pass after Truly identified him as an employee. According to Baker, Oswald did not appear to be nervous or out of breath.  Truly said that Oswald appeared "startled" when Baker aimed his gun at him.  Mrs. Robert Reid—clerical supervisor at the Depository, returning to her office within two minutes of the assassination—said that she saw Oswald who "was very calm" on the second floor with a Coke in his hands.  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 is believed to have left the Depository through the front entrance just before police sealed it off. Oswald's supervisor, Roy Truly, later pointed out to officers that Oswald was the only employee that he was certain was missing.  

At about 12:40 p.m., Oswald boarded a city bus but (probably due to heavy traffic) he requested a transfer from the bus driver and got off two blocks later.  Oswald took a taxicab to his rooming house, at 1026 North Beckley Avenue, arriving at about 1:00 p.m. He entered through the front door and, according to his housekeeper Earlene Roberts, 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 police broadcast description of the man seen by witness Howard Brennan firing shots at the presidential motorcade. Patrolman Tippit's encounter with Oswald occurred 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 [him] through the right front or vent window." "Shortly after 1:15 p.m.",The [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/tapes2.htm first report of Tippit's shooting] was transmitted over Police Channel 1 some time 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. Tippit exited his car and was immediately struck and killed by 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.By the evening of November 22, five of them (Helen Markham, Barbara Jeanette Davis, Virginia Davis, Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard) had identified Lee Harvey 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, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0425a.htm Location of Eyewitnesses to the Movements of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Vicinity of the Tippit Killing]. 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, to the exclusion of all other weapons. However, 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.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, pp. 466–473, [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0237b.htm Testimony of Cortlandt Cunningham]. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 511, [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0260a.htm Testimony of Joseph D. Nicol]. 

Capture

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 into the nearby Texas Theatre without paying.  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." However, Officer 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.[http://www.jfk-online.com/mcdonald.html "Oswald and Officer McDonald:The Arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald"]. Retrieved June 21, 2011.

At about 2 p.m., Oswald arrived at the Police Department building, where he was questioned by Detective Jim Leavelle about the shooting of Officer Tippit. When Captain J. W. Fritz heard Oswald's name, he recognized it as that of the Book Depository employee who was reported missing and was already a suspect in the assassination.   Oswald was formally arraigned for the murder of Officer Tippit at 7:10 p.m., and by the end of the night (shortly after 1:30 a.m.) he had been arraigned for the murder of President Kennedy as well.  

Soon after his capture 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."   

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 revolver before leaving his house to go to the theater.  However, Oswald denied killing Kennedy and Tippit; denied owning a rifle; said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes; 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); and denied carrying a long, bulky package to work the morning of the assassination. Oswald also 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." 

The first interrogation of Oswald was conducted by FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty and Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz (chief of homicide) on Friday, November 22. Asked to account for himself at the time of the assassination, Oswald 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 was encountered by Dallas motorcycle policeman (Marrion L. Baker).     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.   

During one of the interrogation sessions, Deputy-sheriff Roger D. Craig entered the room and noticed that the suspect had openly confessed before his interrogators that he had left the Texas School Book Depository building around the time of the shooting, and when Capt. Will Fritz tried to imply wrongdoing at Oswald’s sudden departure from the building, saying to him: “This man (i.e. deputy Craig) saw you leave,” Oswald quickly retorted with no sense of guilt, “I told you people I did.” Meaning, there was nothing to conceal, in Oswald’s view, at his departure from the building. When Oswald was asked about the car he had gotten into, he replied: “That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine. Don't try to drag her into this.” At one point in the investigation, according to Craig, Oswald said in utter dismay, “Everybody will know who I am now.” The Warren Commission report, however, made it appear as though it was said in a dramatic tone, writing instead: “NOW everybody will know who I am,” transposing the now. According to Craig, the real intonation was that of someone who had heretofore tried to conceal his identity as Deputy and that now it would be known to all; his reaction was that of dismay and disappointment at being exposed. 

During his 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 while being interrogated, as well as in encounters with reporters. But 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."   

Death

On Sunday, November 24, Oswald was being led through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters toward an armored car that was to take him to the nearby county jail. At 11:21 a.m. CST, Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby stepped from the crowd and shot Oswald in the abdomen.  Oswald was taken unconscious by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where doctors tried to save President Kennedy's life two days earlier. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m. Oswald's death was announced on a TV news broadcast by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry.

An autopsy on Oswald was performed in the Office of the County Medical Examiner at 2:45 p.m. the same day. Announcing the results of the gross autopsy, Dallas County medical examiner Earl Rose said: "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 Ruby's bullet entered Oswald's left side in the front part of the abdomen and caused damage to his spleen, stomach, aorta, vena cava, kidney, liver, diaphragm, and eleventh rib before coming to rest on his right side.

A network television pool camera, there to cover the transfer, was broadcasting live; millions watching on NBC witnessed 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 of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. 

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

Oswald was buried on November 25 in Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth.   Reporters present to report on the burial were asked by officials to act as pallbearers.  A marker inscribed simply Oswald replaces the stolen original tombstone, which gave Oswald's full name, and birth and death dates. His mother was buried beside him in 1981. 

A claim that a look-alike Russian agent was buried in place of Oswald led to his exhumation on October 4, 1981.  Dental records confirmed that it was Oswald's body in the grave and he was reburied in a new coffin due to water damage to the original.

In 2010, the Fort Worth funeral home that held Oswald's original coffin employed a Los Angeles auction house to sell it to an undisclosed bidder for $87,468. The sale was halted after Oswald's brother, Robert, learned of the transaction in a Texas newspaper and sued to reclaim the coffin. In January 2015, a district judge in Tarrant County, Texas ruled that the funeral home intentionally concealed the existence of the pine coffin from Robert Oswald who had originally purchased it and believed that it been discarded after the exhumation. The court ordered it returned to Oswald's brother, plus 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

The Warren Commission, created by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy (this view is known as the lone gunman theory). The Commission could not ascribe any one motive or group of motives to Oswald's actions:

The proceedings of the commission were closed, though not secret, and about 3% of its files have yet to be released to the public, which has continued to provoke speculation among researchers."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)

Ramsey Clark Panel

In 1968, the Ramsey Clark Panel examined various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence, concluding 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

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.  However, late in the Committee's proceedings a dictabelt recording was introduced, purportedly recording sounds heard in Dealey Plaza before, during and after the shots were fired. 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 or unlikelihood that particular groups, named in the findings, were involved.  Four of the twelve members of the HSCA dissented from this conclusion.

The acoustical 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, 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 President had been shot, and did not indicate additional gunshots.  Their conclusions were later 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 there were at least two gunmen firing 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 in a book the 2005 Science & Justice article and restated his conclusion that there were at least two gunmen. 

Other investigations and dissenting theories

 

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 framed.

In October 1981, with Marina's support, Oswald's grave was opened to test a theory propounded by writer Michael Eddowes: that during Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union he was replaced with a Soviet double; that it was this double, not Oswald, who killed Kennedy and who is buried in Oswald's grave; and that the exhumed remains would therefore not exhibit a surgical scar Oswald was known to carry. Dental records positively identified the exhumed corpse as Oswald's, and the scar was present.W. Tracy Parnell, [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/xindex.htm The Exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald]. Contrary to reports, the skull of Oswald had been autopsied and this was also confirmed at the exhumation. W. Tracy Parnell, [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/dimaio.htm My Interview With Dr. Vincent J.M. Di Maio].

Public opinion

A 2003 Gallup poll reported that 75% of Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.  That same year an ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up.  A Gallup Poll taken in mid-November 2013, showed 61% believed in a conspiracy, and only 30% thought Oswald acted alone. 

Fictional trials

Several films have fictionalized a trial of Oswald, depicting what may have happened had Ruby not killed Oswald. The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1964); The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977); and On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald (1986) have fictionalized a trial of Oswald. In 1988, a 21-hour unscripted mock trial was held on television, argued by lawyers before a  judge,  with unscripted testimony from surviving witnesses to the events surrounding the assassination; the jury returned a verdict of guilty. In 1992 the American Bar Association conducted two mock Oswald trials. The first trial ended in a hung jury. In the second trial the jury acquitted Oswald.

Backyard photos

The "backyard photos", taken by Marina Oswald probably around March 31, 1963 using a camera belonging to Oswald, show Oswald holding two Marxist newspapers—The Militant and The Worker—and a rifle, and wearing a pistol in a holster. Shown the pictures after his arrest, Oswald insisted they were forgeries, but Marina testified in 1964 that she had taken the photographs at Oswald's request—  testimony she reaffirmed repeatedly over the decades.
*[http://www.jfk-online.com/marinashaw2.html Testimony of Marina Oswald Porter], Trial of Clay Shaw, Criminal District Court, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, February 21, 1969.
*United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/marinade.htm#maraug Deposition of Marina Oswald Porter] (1977):
Q. I want to mark these two photographs. On the back of the first one, which I would ask be marked JFK committee exhibit No. 1, it says in the bottom right-hand corner copy from the National Archives, records group No. 272, under that it says CE-133B. I will ask that be marked JFK exhibit No. 1. (The above referred to photograph was marked JFK committee exhibit No. 1 for identification.)
Q. New, this second picture that I will ask to be marked says copy from the National Archives, record group No. 272, CE-133. I would ask that this be marked JFK committee exhibit No. 2. (The above referred to photograph was marked JFK committee exhibit No. 2 for identification.)
By Mr. KLEIN:
Q. I will show you those two photographs which are marked JFK exhibit No. 1 and exhibit No. 2, do you recognize those two photographs?
A. I sure do. I have seen them many times.
Q. What are they?
A. That is the pictures that I took.
*United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, Hearings, vol. 2 p. 239, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol2/html/HSCA_Vol2_0122a.htm Testimony of Marina Oswald Porter] (1978):
Mr. McDONALD. Mrs. Porter, I have got two exhibits to show you, if the clerk would procure them from the representatives of the National Archives. We have two photographs to show you. They are [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0094a.htm Warren Commission Exhibits C-133-A and B], which have been given JFK Nos. F-378 and F-379. If the clerk would please hand them to you, and also if we could now have for display purposes JFK Exhibit F-179, which is a blowup of the two photographs placed in front of you. Mrs. Porter, do you recognize the photographs placed in front of you?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes, I do.
Mr. McDONALD. And how do you recognize them?
Mrs. PORTER. That is the photograph that I made of Lee on his persistent request of taking a picture of him dressed like that with rifle.
*Marina Oswald Porter, interview with author Vincent Bugliosi and lawyer Jack Duffy, Dallas, Texas, November 30, 2000, reported in Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 794.
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. 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. 

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 [April 5, 1963]."  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."
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