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Lee Harvey Oswald
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Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was, according to three United States government investigations, the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. A former United States Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and later returned, Oswald, age 24, was arrested on suspicion of killing Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit and later connected to the assassination of President Kennedy. Oswald denied any responsibility for the murders.
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Encyclopedia
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was, according to three United States government investigations, the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. A former United States Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and later returned, Oswald, age 24, was arrested on suspicion of killing Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit and later connected to the assassination of President Kennedy. Oswald denied any responsibility for the murders. Two days later—before he could be brought to trial for the crimes, while being transferred under police custody from the city jail to the county jail—Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by Jack Ruby on live television. In 1964 the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy single-handedly, a conclusion also reached by prior investigations of the FBI and the Dallas Police Department. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded, based on disputed acoustic evidence, that Oswald assassinated Kennedy "probably as a result of a conspiracy."
Biography
Childhood
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, of English, German, French and Irish ancestry. His father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. (New Orleans, March 4, 1896 – New Orleans, August 19, 1939), who had previously been married before marrying Oswald's mother on July 20, 1933, died two months before Lee was born. His mother, Marguerite Frances Claverie (New Orleans, July 19, 1907 – Fort Worth, Texas, January 17, 1981), largely raised Lee on her own along with two older siblings: his brother Robert and his half-brother, John Pic (1932–2000), Marguerite's son from a previous marriage. Oswald did have a stepfather, Edwin A. Ekdahl (1888–1965), from 1945 to 1948.
Lee's youth was characterized by extreme mobility; before the age of 18, Oswald had lived in 22 different homes. Because of the short-lived stay in each location, he had attended 12 different schools, mostly around New Orleans, Covington, Louisiana and Dallas, but also in New York City. His mother sent him to an orphanage for 13 months in 1942–1943 when she was too poor to take care of him and his brothers.
As a child, Oswald was withdrawn and temperamental. After moving in with his half-brother, who had joined the US Coast Guard and was stationed in New York City, Oswald and Pic were asked to leave after an incident in which Oswald allegedly threatened Pic's wife with a knife, and struck his mother. Following charges of truancy, he was put under a three week court-ordered stay for psychiatric observation in a facility called Youth House. Dr. Renatus Hartogs described Oswald as having a "vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations," and diagnosed the 14-year-old Oswald as having a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies" and recommended continued psychiatric intervention.
Oswald's behavior at school appeared to improve during his last months in New York. In January 1954, his mother Marguerite decided to return to New Orleans with Lee, which prevented him from receiving the care the psychiatrist had recommended. There was still an open question pending before a New York judge whether or not he should be taken from the care of his mother to finish his schooling.
Oswald left school after the 9th grade, dropping out of Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth. He never received a high school diploma. A dyslexic, he had trouble with spelling and writing coherently. Yet Oswald read voraciously and, by age 15, claimed to be a Marxist from his reading on the topic. He wrote in his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries." At 16, Oswald wrote to the Socialist Party of America, stating that he was a Marxist who had been studying socialist principles for "well over fifteen months," and asked for information about their youth league.
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.'"
Military service
Despite his avowed Marxist sympathies, Oswald enlisted in the US Marine Corps on October 24, 1956, one week after his seventeenth birthday. He idolized his older brother, Robert, and wore Robert's U.S. Marines ring. Joining the Marines may have also been a way to escape from his overbearing mother.
While in the Marines, Oswald was trained in the use of the M1 Garand rifle. Following that training, he was tested in December 1956, and obtained a score of 212, which was 2 points above the minimum for qualifications as a sharpshooter. In May 1959, on another range, Oswald scored 191, which was 1 point over the minimum for ranking as a marksman.
Oswald, however, was trained primarily as a radar operator, a job that required 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." Oswald took the Aircraft Control and Warning Operator Course and finished seventh in a class of thirty. The course "...included instruction in aircraft surveillance and the use of radar." He was assigned first to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Irvine, California in July 1957, then to Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan in September 1957. Although Atsugi was a base for the top-secret CIA U-2 spy planes that flew over the Soviet Union, there is no evidence Oswald was involved in that operation.
Oswald was court-martialled twice: initially because of accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized handgun, and then later for starting a fight with a sergeant he thought responsible for the punishment he received from his first court-martial. He was demoted from private first class to private, and briefly served time in the brig. Later, he was punished for another incident: While on sentry duty one night in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.
Small compared with some other Marines, Oswald was nicknamed Ozzie Rabbit after the cartoon character. For his steadfast beliefs, he was also nicknamed Oswaldskovich. In December 1958, he transferred back to the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. The function of Oswald's unit at El Toro "...was to serveil for aircraft, but basically to train both enlisted men and officers for later assignment overseas." One of Oswald's officers, Lieutenant John Donovan, said that Oswald was a "very competent" crew chief. Oswald subscribed to the Communist Party newspaper, The Worker, and claimed to have taught himself rudimentary Russian. At the El Toro base, in February 1959, he took the Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken Russian and his test results were rated "poor."
Life in the Soviet Union
In October 1959, Oswald emigrated to the Soviet Union. He was 19, and the trip was planned well in advance. Along with having taught himself rudimentary Russian, he had saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary, got an early "hardship" discharge by (falsely) claiming he needed to care for his injured mother, got a passport, and submitted several fictional applications to foreign universities in order to obtain a student visa.
After spending three days with his mother in Fort Worth, Oswald departed by ship from New Orleans on September 20, 1959, to Le Havre, France. He left for England that same day, and arrived on October 9. He told customs officials in Southampton that he had $700 and planned to remain in the United Kingdom for one week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. But on the same day, he flew on a Finnair flight to Helsinki, Finland, where he stayed until October 15. Oswald probably applied for a visa at the Soviet consulate on October 12. The visa was issued on October 14. He left Helsinki by train on the following day, crossed the Finnish-Soviet border at Vainikkala, and arrived in Moscow on October 16.
He almost immediately announced to his Intourist guide his intention to become a citizen of the Soviet Union. But when he was informed on October 21 that his application for citizenship had been refused, Oswald made a bloody but minor cut to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub. After bandaging his superficial injury, the cautious Soviets kept him under psychiatric observation at a hospital.
When Oswald showed up unexpectedly at the United States embassy in Moscow on October 31, he said he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship. He told Soviet officials "...that he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he ... would make known to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his speciality as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest." When the Navy Department learned of this, it changed Oswald's Marine Corps discharge from "hardship/honorable" to "undesirable".
John McVickar, one of the American consular officials at the Moscow embassy who was in contact with Oswald, said he felt Oswald, "...was following a pattern of behavior in which he had been tutored by [a] person or persons unknown ... seemed to be using words which he had learned but did not fully understand ... in short, it seemed to me that there was a possibility that he had been in contact with others before or during his Marine Corps tour who had guided him and encouraged him in his actions."
Although Oswald had wanted to remain in Moscow and attend Moscow University, he was sent to Minsk, now the capital of Belarus. He was given a job as a metal lathe operator at the Gorizont (Horizon) Electronics Factory in Minsk, a huge facility that produced radios and televisions along with military and space electronic components. He was given a rent-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building under Gorizont's administration and in addition to his factory pay received monetary subsidies from the Russian Red Cross Society. This represented an idyllic existence by Soviet-era working-class standards. Oswald was under constant surveillance by the KGB during his thirty-month stay in Minsk.
Oswald gradually grew bored with the limited recreation available in Minsk. He 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 opened negotiations with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow over his proposed return to the United States.
At a dance in early 1961 Oswald met Marina Prusakova, a troubled 19-year-old pharmacology student from a broken family in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) who was then living with her aunt and uncle in Minsk. Lee and Marina married on April 30, 1961, less than six weeks after they met. Their first child, June, was born on February 15, 1962.
After nearly a year of paperwork and waiting, on June 1, 1962 the young family left the Soviet Union for the United States. Even before November 22, 1963, Oswald received a small measure of national notoriety in the U.S. press as an American who had defected to the U.S.S.R. and returned.
In 1964, Oswald's mother, Marguerite, recorded and released an album on Folkways Records reading and commenting on his letters from his time in Soviet Union. It was entitled, The Oswald Case: Mrs. Marguerite Oswald Reads Lee Harvey Oswald's Letters from Russia.
Dallas
Back in the United States, the Oswalds settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where his mother and brother lived, and Lee attempted to write his memoir and commentary on Soviet life, a small manuscript called The Collective. He soon gave up the idea but his search for literary feedback put him in touch with the area's close-knit community of anti-Communist Russian émigrés. While merely tolerating the belligerent and arrogant Lee Oswald, they sympathized with Marina, partly because she was in a foreign country with no knowledge of English (which her husband refused to teach her, saying he didn't want to forget Russian) and because Oswald had begun to beat her.
Although the Russian émigrés eventually abandoned Marina when she made no sign of leaving him, Oswald had found an unlikely friend in the well-educated and worldly petroleum geologist George de Mohrenschildt, A native Russian-speaker himself, de Mohrenschildt wrote that Oswald spoke Russian "very well, with only a little accent." Marina meanwhile befriended a married couple: Ruth Paine, who was trying to learn Russian, and her husband Michael.
In Dallas in July 1962, Oswald got a job with the Leslie Welding Company, but disliked the work and quit after three months. He then found a position in October 1962 at the graphic arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. He may have used photographic and typesetting equipment in the unsecured area to create falsified identification documents, including some in the name of an alias he created, Alek James Hidell. His co-workers and supervisors eventually grew frustrated with his inefficiency, lack of precision, inattention, and rudeness to others, to the point where fights had threatened to break out. He had also been seen reading a Russian publication, Krokodil (Russian: '????????', 'crocodile'), in the cafeteria. On April 1, 1963, after six months of work, Oswald's supervisor terminated Oswald's employment at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
Attempted assassination of General Walker
The Warren Commission concluded that on April 10, 1963, ten days after being fired, Oswald attempted to assassinate retired Major General Edwin Walker, and that Oswald probably used the rifle shown in his backyard pose photos of March 31. (The House Select Committee on Assassinations stated that the "evidence strongly suggested" that Oswald did the shooting.)
General Edwin Walker was an outspoken anti-communist, segregationist and member of the John Birch Society who had been commanding officer of the Army's 24th Infantry Division based in West Germany under NATO supreme command until he was relieved of his command in 1961 by JFK for distributing right-wing literature to his troops. Walker resigned from the service and returned to his native Texas. He became involved in the movement to resist the use of federal troops for securing racial integration at the University of Mississippi, resistance that led to a riot on October 1, 1962 in which two people were killed. He was arrested for insurrection, seditious conspiracy, and other charges, but a local federal grand jury refused to indict Walker.
Oswald considered Walker a "fascist" and the leader of a "fascist organization." In March 1963, Oswald purchased a 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle (also commonly but improperly called Mannlicher-Carcano) by mail order, using the alias "A. Hidell." He also purchased a revolver by the same method.
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald attempted to shoot General Walker with his rifle, while Walker was sitting at a desk in his dining room. Oswald fired at him from less than one hundred feet (30 m) away. Walker survived only because the bullet struck the wooden frame of the window, which deflected its path, but was injured in the forearm by bullet fragments. Oswald returned home and told Marina what he had just done.
General Walker's brush with death was reported nationwide. The Dallas police had no suspects in the shooting.
Oswald's involvement in the attempt on Walker's life was suspected within hours of his arrest on November 22, 1963, following the Kennedy assassination. But 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 early December 1963, after which Marina told authorities about Oswald and Walker. The bullet was too badly damaged to run conclusive ballistics studies on it, though neutron activation tests later showed that it was "extremely likely" that the Walker bullet was from the same cartridge manufacturer and for the same rifle make as the two bullets which later struck Kennedy.
New Orleans
Oswald returned to New Orleans on April 25, 1963 and got a job as a machinery greaser with the Reily Coffee Company in May. Oswald's wife, Marina, joined him in New Orleans, after being driven there by family friend Ruth Paine. In July, Oswald was fired from Reily for malingering.
On May 26, 1963, Oswald, without any previous contact with the FPCC, and with no membership in the Communist Party USA, wrote a letter to the New York City headquarters of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization, and proposed "...renting a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans." The FPCC Chairman replied, rejecting Oswald's proposal and later commented on its suspicious nature. In that letter, Oswald also claimed to have had a public brawl with a Cuban refugee, although that fight would not occur for two weeks.
On August 5 and 6, according to Carlos Bringuier, Oswald visited him at a store he owned in New Orleans. Bringuier was the New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro Cuban Student Directorate. Bringuier told the Warren Commission that he believed Oswald's visits were an attempt by Oswald to infiltrate his anti-Castro group. Three days later, on August 9, Oswald turned up in downtown New Orleans handing out pro-Castro fliers. Bringuier confronted Oswald, claiming he was tipped off about Oswald's leafleting by a friend. During an ensuing scuffle, Oswald, along with Bringuier and two of his friends, was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.
The arrest got news media attention and Oswald was interviewed afterwards. He was also filmed passing out fliers in front of the International Trade Mart with two 'volunteers' he had hired (hired, because Oswald was not a member of the Communist Party USA so he had no regular volunteers). Oswald's political work in New Orleans came to an end after a WDSU radio debate between Bringuier and Oswald arranged by journalist Bill Stuckey. During the course of the debate, Oswald was confronted with accusations about his past in the Soviet Union and his activities in New Orleans.
Oswald's activities in New Orleans in mid-1963 were investigated by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison during his prosecution of Clay Shaw in 1969. Garrison was particularly interested in investigating David Ferrie's connections to Oswald, which Ferrie himself denied. Ferrie died before he could be brought to trial. In 1993, the PBS television program Frontline obtained a group photograph, taken eight years before the assassination, that showed Oswald and Ferrie at a cookout with other Civil Air Patrol cadets.
Ron Lewis claimed that he briefly met David Ferrie and Guy Banister, and Lewis could have substantiated many claims proposed by Jim Garrison, but Lewis decided not to risk personal danger by coming forward with his testimony during the trial of Clay Shaw.
Mexico
While Ruth Paine drove Marina back to Dallas in late September 1963, Oswald lingered in New Orleans for two more days waiting to collect a $33 unemployment check. It has never been conclusively established precisely when Oswald left New Orleans, or what mode of transportation he took. He is next known to have boarded a bus in Houston, but instead of heading north to Dallas, he took a bus southwest towards Laredo and the U.S.-Mexico border. Once in Mexico he hoped to continue to Cuba, a plan he openly shared with other passengers on the bus. Arriving in Mexico City, he completed a transit visa application at the Cuban Embassy, claiming he wanted to visit the country on his way back to the Soviet Union. The Cubans insisted the Soviet Union would have to approve his journey to the USSR before he could get a Cuban visa, but he was unable to get speedy co-operation from the Soviet embassy.
After shuttling back and forth between consulates for five days, getting into a heated argument with the Cuban consul, making impassioned pleas to KGB agents, and coming under at least some CIA interest, the Cuban consul told Oswald that "as far as [he] was concerned [he] would not give him a visa" and that "a person like him [Oswald] in place of aiding the Cuban Revolution, was doing it harm." However, less than three weeks later, on October 18 the Cuban embassy in Mexico City finally approved the visa, and 11 days before the assassination Oswald wrote a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., which said, "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business."
Return to Dallas
Oswald left Mexico City on October 3, and returned by bus to Dallas, where he looked for employment. Through Ruth Paine he found a job filling book orders at the Texas School Book Depository, where he started work on October 16. During the week, he lived in a rooming house on Beckley Street in Dallas, and spent the weekends with his wife at the Paine home in Irving, Texas, about 15 miles (24 km) from central Dallas. On October 20, the Oswalds' second daughter was born. During this period, the FBI was aware of Oswald's whereabouts in Texas, and agents from the Dallas office twice visited the Paine home in early November when Oswald was not present, hoping to get more information about Marina Oswald, whom the FBI suspected of being a Soviet agent.
On November 16, a local newspaper reported that President Kennedy's motorcade would be going through central Dallas on November 22, "probably on Main Street" one block from the Texas School Book Depository, which it would have to pass to get onto the freeway to the President's luncheon site. This was confirmed by exact descriptions of the motorcade route published on November 19. On Thursday, November 21, Oswald asked Buell Wesley Frazier, a co-worker, for a ride to Irving, saying he had to pick up some curtain rods. The next morning, after leaving $170 and his wedding ring, he returned to Dallas with Frazier, carrying a long paper bag with him.
Oswald was last seen by a co-worker alone on the second floor of the depository about 15 minutes before the assassination.
Assassination of JFK
Bullets struck John F. Kennedy and other people at 12:30 pm on November 22, 1963, resulting in the death of Kennedy. The 1964 Warren Commission report on the John F. Kennedy assassination concluded that those bullets came from a 6.5 millimeter Italian carbine with a four-power scope that Oswald fired from a window on the sixth floor of the book depository warehouse as the President's motorcade passed through Dallas's Dealey Plaza.
Texas Governor John Connally was also seriously wounded along with assassination witness James Tague who received a minor facial injury. Shortly after midnight on November 23, in an impromptu news conference, Oswald denied shooting and killing either President Kennedy or Officer J. D. Tippit.
Oswald's flight and the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit
According to the Warren Commission report, immediately after he shot President Kennedy, Oswald hid the rifle behind some boxes and descended via the depository's rear stairwell. On the second floor he encountered Dallas police officer Marion Baker who had driven his motorcycle to the door of the depository and sprinted up the stairs in search of the shooter. With Baker was Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly, who identified Oswald as an employee, which caused Baker, who had his pistol in hand, to let Oswald pass. This encounter occurred in the second floor lunch room approximately 90 seconds after the shooting. Subsequently, Oswald crossed the floor to the front staircase, descended and left the building through the front entrance on Elm Street, just before the police sealed the building off. Oswald was the only employee who left the building after the assassination; his supervisor later noticed Oswald missing, and reported his name and address to the Dallas police in the building.
At about 12:40 p.m. (CST), Oswald boarded a city bus when heavy traffic had slowed the bus to a halt about two blocks later, he requested a bus transfer from the driver and exited the bus. He took a taxicab to a few blocks beyond his rooming house and walked back to his rooming house. On the bus was Oswald's former landlady, who recognized him. At about 1:00 p.m., he went into his room briefly, and came out zipping up a jacket. His housekeeper, Earlene Roberts, testified that "he was walking pretty fast — he was all but running." Oswald left the house and was last seen by Roberts standing by a bus stop across the street.
He was next seen walking about four-fifths of a mile away. Patrolman J. D. Tippit encountered Oswald on a residential street in the neighborhood of Oak Cliff, and pulled up behind him to talk to him through his patrol car window. Tippit then got out of his car and Oswald fired at the police officer with his .38 caliber revolver. Four of the shots hit Tippit, killing him, in view of two eyewitnesses. Seven other witnesses heard the shots and saw the gunman flee the scene with the revolver in his hand. Three other witnesses identified Oswald as fleeing the scene. Four cartridge cases were found at the scene by eyewitnesses. It was the unanimous testimony of expert witnesses before the Warren Commission that these used cartridge cases were fired from the revolver in Oswald's possession to the exclusion of all other weapons.
A few minutes later, Oswald ducked into the entrance alcove of a shoe store to avoid passing police cars, then slipped into the nearby Texas Theater without paying. The shoe store's manager, who had been listening to the day's events on the radio and felt Oswald was acting suspicious, followed him into the theater where he alerted the ticket clerk, who phoned the police.
The police quickly arrived en masse and entered the theater as the lights were turned on. Officer Maurice N. McDonald approached Oswald sitting near the rear and ordered him to stand up. As Oswald said "Well, it is all over now" and appeared to raise his hands in surrender, he struck the officer. A scuffle ensued where McDonald reported that Oswald pulled the trigger on his revolver, but the hammer came down on the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger of the officer's hand, which prevented the revolver from firing. Oswald was eventually subdued. As he was led past an angry group of people who had gathered outside the theater, Oswald shouted that he was a victim of police brutality.
Oswald was held on suspicion of the shooting of Officer Tippit and was questioned by Detective Jim Leavelle. Shortly afterward Oswald was also booked on suspicion of murdering both President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. By the end of the night he had been arraigned for both murders.
While in custody, Oswald had an impromptu, face-to-face brush with reporters and photographers in the hallway of the police station. A reporter asked him, "Did you shoot the President?" and Oswald answered, "I have not been accused of that." The reporters answered that he had been. "In fact, I didn't even know about it until a reporter in the hall asked me that question," Oswald added. Later Oswald said to reporters, "I didn't shoot anyone," and "They're taking me in because of the fact I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!"
Police interrogation
Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days of detention at Dallas Police Headquarters. He denied killing President Kennedy or Officer Tippit, denied owning a rifle, said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes, denied knowing anything about the forged Selective Service card with the name "Alek J. Hidell" in his wallet, denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment, and denied he had been seen carrying a long heavy package to work the morning of the assassination.
During his first interrogation on November 22, Oswald was asked to account for himself at the time the President was shot. Oswald said that he ate lunch in the first-floor lunchroom of the Texas School Book Depository and then went up to the second floor for a Coke, during which he encountered the police officer. During his last interrogation on November 24, Oswald was asked again where he was at the time of the shooting. Oswald said he was working on one of the upper floors of the Depository when it occurred, and that he then went downstairs, where he encountered the police officer.
Oswald's murder
At 11:21 am Sunday, November 24 1963, while he was handcuffed to Detective Leavelle and as he was about to be taken to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was shot and fatally wounded before live television cameras in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator who said, when accused, he had been distraught over the Kennedy assassination.
Unconscious, Oswald was put into an ambulance and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where JFK had died two days earlier. Doctors operated on Oswald, but Ruby's single bullet had severed major abdominal blood vessels, and the doctors were unable to repair the massive trauma. At 48 hours and 7 minutes after the President's death, Oswald was pronounced dead at 1:07 pm. After a full autopsy, Oswald's body was returned to his family. Oswald's grave is in Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth. It is marked by a stone which reads simply, Oswald.
His wife Marina was sequestered by federal agents the day after the assassination and later released.
Investigations
The Warren Commission created by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy and that he acted alone (also known as the lone gunman theory). The proceedings of the commission were closed, but not secret, and about 3% of its files have yet to be released to the public, which has continued to provoke speculation among researchers. In 1968 The Ramsey Clark Panel met in Washington, DC to examine various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence pertaining to the death of President Kennedy. It concluded that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its right side. *In 1979, an investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy "probably...as the result of a conspiracy." The HSCA prepared an initial report concluding that Oswald acted alone until a Dictabelt recording purportedly of the assassination surfaced and the Committee revised their conclusion. This acoustic evidence has itself been called into question and some believe it is not a recording of the assassination at all. Staff director and chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey, told ABC News that there were 20 people, at least, who heard a shot from the grassy knoll, and that the conclusion that a conspiracy existed in the assassination was established by both the witness testimony and acoustic evidence. In 2004, he expressed less confidence in the acoustic evidence. Officer McLain, whose motorcycle the Dictabelt evidence comes from, has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. The HSCA was unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. It also had insufficient evidence to identify any group responsible.
In 1982, a group of twelve scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), led by Professor Norman Ramsey of Harvard, concluded that the acoustic evidence and the team behind its submission to the HSCA was "seriously flawed." While the NAS said that the HSCA acoustical evidence was flawed, a 2001 peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice, the journal of Britain's Forensic Science Society, said that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. The article's author, Dr. Donald B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, concluded, with a 96.3 percent certainty, that there were at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy and that one of the shots came from the grassy knoll in front of Kennedy. Commenting on the British study, House Select Committee on Assassinations staff director and chief counsel G. Robert Blakey said: "This is an honest, careful scientific examination of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks."
Possible motives
The Warren Commission could not ascribe any one motive or group of motives to Oswald's actions:
1981 exhumation
In October 1981 Oswald's body was exhumed at the behest of British writer Michael Eddowes, with Marina Oswald Porter's support. He sought to prove a thesis developed in a 1975 book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy (re-published in 1976, in Britain as November 22: How They Killed Kennedy and in America a year later as The Oswald File). Eddowes' theory was that during Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union he was replaced with a Soviet double named Alek, who was a member of a KGB assassination squad. Eddowes' claim is that it was this look-alike who killed Kennedy, and not Oswald. Eddowes's support for his thesis was a claim that the corpse buried in 1963 in the Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas did not have a scar that resulted from surgery conducted on Oswald years before. When Oswald's body was exhumed it was found that the plain, mole skin-covered pine coffin had ruptured and was filled with water, leaving the body in an advanced state of decomposition with partial skeletonization. The examination positively identified Oswald's corpse through dental records, and also detected a mastoid scar from a childhood operation. Contrary to reports, the skull of Oswald had been autopsied and this was confirmed at the exhumation.
Kennedy assassination theories
Critics have not accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission and have proposed a number of alternative theories which assert that Oswald conspired with others or Oswald was not involved at all and was framed. One government investigation, the HSCA, ruled out many of these theories but concluded that, while Oswald was the assassin, that Kennedy was "probably" killed as the result of a conspiracy. However, the HSCA report did not identify any probable co-conspirators and its conclusion has been criticised for its reliance upon acoustic evidence that has been called into question.
Fictional trials
Several films have fictionalized a trial of Oswald, including The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1964, another movie of the same name in 1977, and On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald in 1986. In 1986, London Weekend Television hosted a 21 hour television special in which an unscripted trial was held with an actual judge and lawyers. U.S. prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi described the event in his book Reclaiming History. Real eyewitnesses from the assassination testified as to what they saw and the mock jury returned a verdict of guilty. Author Gerald Posner (whose book Case Closed surmises that the Warren Commission reached the correct conclusions) also participated in a shorter (5 hour) televised mock trial of Oswald which made use of actors rather than witnesses.
Carcano rifle
In March 1963, Oswald used his alias "A. Hidell" (which he would later use for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and for which he was carrying an I.D. card when arrested after the Kennedy murder) to purchase the rifle later linked to the November 22, 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. The surplus Italian military rifle was purchased from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, with a coupon taken from an ad in the February issue of American Rifleman. FBI and Treasury Department experts later matched the handwriting on the coupon and the envelope to Oswald. The rifle was purchased under "A. Hidell" but sent to a Dallas post office box rented by Oswald under his own name.
Backyard photos
The "backyard photos," which were taken by Marina Oswald, probably around Sunday, March 31, 1963, show Oswald dressed all in black and holding two Marxist newspapers—The Militant and The Worker—in one hand, a rifle in the other, and carrying a pistol in its holster. The backyard photos were shot using a camera belonging to Oswald, an When shown the pictures at Dallas Police headquarters after his arrest, Oswald insisted they were fakes. However, Marina Oswald testified in 1964, 1977, and 1978, and reaffirmed in 2000 that she took the photographs at Oswald's request.
These photos were labelled CE 133-A and CE 133-B. CE 133-A shows the rifle in Oswald's left hand and newsletters 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 consulted by the HSCA concluded the English inscription and signature were written by Lee Oswald. After two original photos, one negative and one first-generation copy had been found, the Senate Intelligence Committee located (in 1976) a third photograph of Oswald with a backyard pose that was different (CE 133-C, with newspapers held in his right hand away from his body). A test photo by the Dallas Police in the identical pose was released with the Warren Commission evidence in 1964, but it is not known why the photo itself was not publicly acknowledged until a print was found in 1975 amongst the belongings of deceased Dallas police officer Roscoe White.
These photos have been subjected to rigorous analysis. A panel of twenty-two photographic experts consulted by the HSCA examined the photographs and answered twenty-one points of contention raised by critics. The panel concluded the photographs were genuine. Marina Oswald has always maintained she took the photos herself, and the 1963 de Mohrenschildt print with Oswald's own signature clearly indicate they existed before the assassination. However, despite such evidence, some critics continue to contest the authenticity of the photographs.
Further reading
- Bugliosi, Vincent. Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Norton, 2007, 1632 p. ISBN 0393045250.
- Eddowes, Michael. Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, self-published, (1975), paperback (republished as Nov. 22, How They Killed Kennedy, Neville Spearman (1976), hardback, ISBN 0-85978-019-8 and as The Oswald File, Potter (1977), hardcover, ISBN 0-517-53055-4)
- Groden, Robert J.. The Search of Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record, New York: Penguin Studio Books, 1995. ISBN 0-670-85867-6
- La Fontaine, Ray and Mary, "Oswald Talked: The New Evidence in the JFK Assassination", Gretna: Pelican Publishing Co., 1996. ISBN 1-56554-029-8
- Lambert, Patricia. False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK, New York: M. Evans & Company, 1998, ISBN 0-87131-920-9
- Lifton, David S., Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the. Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Carroll & Graf Publishers, NYC, 1988, softcover, ISBN 0-88184-438-1
- Mailer, Norman. Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, New York: Ballantine Books, (1995) ISBN 0-345-40437-8
- Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1990, ISBN 0-88184-648-1
- McMillan, Priscilla Johnson. Marina and Lee, New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
- Melanson, Philip H. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald And U. S. Intelligence, Praeger Publishing, 1990, ISBN 0-275-93571-X
- Newman, John. Oswald and the CIA, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1995, ISBN 0-7867-0131-5
- Nechiporenko, Oleg M. Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993, ISBN 1-559-72210-X
- Posner, Gerald. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, Random House, 1993, hardcover, ISBN 0-679-41825-3
- Smith, Matthew. JFK: Say Goodbye to America, Mainstream Publishing, 2004.
- Smith, Matthew, JFK: The Second Plot. Mainstream Publishing.Edinburgh and London. 2000. ISBN 1-84018-501-5
- Summers, Anthony. Conspiracy, London: Fontana Books, 1980.
- Summers, Anthony. Not in Your Lifetime, New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998, ISBN 1-56924-739-0
External links
- Exclusive television coverage -- most from the KRLD -TV/KDFW Collection at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
- by Perry Vermeulen
- by John McAdams
- by Rex Bradford
- Retrieved on 2009-02-13
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