Eight Seconds in History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Persistence of Conspiracy Theories

"Murderers are not monsters; they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them."

-Alice Sebold

There is perhaps no crime more infamous in US history than the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A man who had been born into a prominent and wealthy family, who had already served his country honorably in the Second World War, and whose presidency had brought about such promise and a vision of a better America, President Kennedy's short time in office nonetheless etched his place in history forever as one of America's most revered leaders.

But tragically, on November 22, 1963, in the city of Dallas, Texas, the presidency of John F. Kennedy would come to a sudden and violent end at the hands of an assassin's bullets. Kennedy's killer was the polar opposite of him - a nobody, a high school dropout, and a man who was for all intents and purposes an utter failure at life. That such a seemingly insignificant person could, in the space of seconds, change the course of history so drastically - and strike down one of the most powerful and beloved people in the world - seemed unreal. And so it is no wonder that, even today, the simple truth of President Kennedy's death is still not accepted by the majority of Americans.

There was no satisfactory resolution to the case of the Kennedy assassination. The killer of President Kennedy - Lee Harvey Oswald - never made it to trial. Two days after killing Kennedy, Oswald himself fell to an assassin's bullet as he was being transferred to the Dallas County Jail. Prosecutors never got the chance to present the evidence against Oswald in a court of law. A jury never had the chance to reach a verdict. A sentence was never handed down. And despite the countless investigations concluding over and over again that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin who killed President Kennedy, the death of Oswald served to create an information vacuum, which would itself be filled by incessant conspiracy theories.

These conspiracy theorists have made it their mission in life to distort the truth of the assassination. They spin wild stories about CIA plots and sinister, elitist bureaucrats scheming to assassinate the president to fulfill some sort of political agenda. They scream about how, even today, the US government continues to lie about the Kennedy assassination and hide the truth from the public.

But the truth of the case is very simple and, in the end, very mundane. It is a truth that these conspiracy theorists are incapable of accepting: A king being struck down by a peasant may be unthinkable, but it is far from impossible.

Thousands of works have already been written on the Kennedy case before - some of which involved decades of research and writing. I do not intend for this piece to somehow surpass or even rival those works; only that - amidst the shrill voice of the conspiracist lies that have permeated the discourse about this dark time in our nation's history - I can do my part to lay out the truth of what happened.

A Shot in the Dark

April 10th, 1963, was a humid, foggy day in the city of Dallas, Texas, itself overshadowing a tense political climate that gripped the southern states of the US. For the first time since the civil war a hundred years earlier, the divisions between North and South were again reaching a breaking point. African-Americans and their northern allies began to challenge decades of racial hatred and segregation. Civil rights workers campaigned for an end to centuries of white supremacy and oppression of black citizens. They were joined by allies in high places, including President John F. Kennedy himself, a liberal from Massachusetts who strongly supported the Civil Rights movement. 

And change was in the air. In 1954, the US Supreme Court had ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, striking a major blow against the institutions of Jim Crow that had dominated the south for years. On Capitol Hill, bipartisan legislation was being proposed that would outlaw racial segregation altogether, bringing the conservative and traditionalist policies of the south in line with the progressive and liberal culture of the north.

But centuries of hate cannot be overcome with simple legislation. For generations - continuing even to this day - white supremacy had a stranglehold over the south, and white southerners, conservative and resistant to change, fought back with all they had. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized the black community and its allies, and the conflict between North and South was beginning to open up old wounds.

One of those who fought against this new civil rights movement was a fiery war veteran named Edwin Walker. A decorated general who had served in World War II and Korea, Walker had turned to anti-communist activism after retiring from the army. Convinced that the Civil Rights movement was a subversive communist plot to destroy American values, Walker had become one of the white supremacist movement's most vocal and vitriolic pundits. In 1962, he had made headlines after giving a fiery speech against integration at the University of Mississippi - a speech which quickly boiled over into a violent riot in which two people were killed.

Once an admired war hero, Major General Edwin Walker's staunch anticommunist, white supremacist, and segregationist views made him a hero to the American far-right in the early 1960s.

Though he enjoyed strong support in the conservative white south, Walker had his fair share of enemies. He was reviled by northern politicians for his racist rhetoric, and he had even drawn the ire of the Attorney General Robert Kennedy - the brother of the president.

But on the night of April 10, 1963, as Walker sat in his home in Dallas doing his taxes, he had no idea that he was in the crosshairs of one determined radical who harbored a hatred of right-wing politics and a fanatical devotion to Marxist and communist thought. He had been stalking Walker for weeks, scouting out his house and drawing up detailed maps of the area. And unlike the peaceful activists of the Civil Rights movement, this man was fully prepared to kill in furtherance of his agenda.

His name was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Lee Harvey Oswald had lived a tumultuous life. Born on October 18, 1939, to an abusive and mentally ill widow in New Orleans, Louisiana, Oswald's early life was punctuated by instability. By the time Oswald was 12, he had been moved from New Orleans to Dallas and finally to New York City. The young man did poorly in school, frequently going truant and dropping out multiple times, before finally quitting school for good in the 10th grade. Oswald later enlisted in the Marines in 1956 at the age of 16, hoping to pursue a military career, but his service was marred by frequent disciplinary actions and a court martial. He ultimately received an undesirable discharge from the Marine Corps in 1959 and left the military in disgrace.

Lee Harvey Oswald, photographed in Minsk in 1961

But during this time, Oswald had developed an interest in increasingly radical left-wing politics. Oswald's journey into leftism began when he was 13, after accused Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage in a highly-controversial case that galvanized the political left. In the Marines, Oswald was introduced to leftist literature, including works by Karl Marx, and developed a deep dissatisfaction with the US government and a growing admiration for communism and the Soviet Union. He even learned how to speak Russian.

Upon leaving the Marines, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union, publicly renounced his American citizenship, and attempted to defect to the Soviets. He hoped to become a valuable asset to the Soviets, even believing that his time in the Marines had given him intel that he could provide to the KGB. But the Soviet Union thought little of Oswald. The intel he possessed was either insignificant or had long before leaked to Soviet intelligence, and the KGB denied his request for Soviet citizenship. Devastated, Oswald slashed his wrists in a suicide attempt, but - like most else he had tried in his life - he failed.

After living in Minsk for two years, Oswald met 19-year-old Marina Prusakova at a dance in 1961. The two married six weeks later and in 1962 Marina gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named June. However, Oswald's lack of Soviet citizenship meant he couldn't find work to support his new family, and in June of 1962 Oswald, Marina, and June moved back to the United States, settling in Dallas, Texas.

Lee Oswald with his wife, Marina Prusakova, and their infant daughter, June

Lee and Marina's marriage was not a happy one. Like his mother, Oswald was abusive and controlling, frequently beating Marina and threatening to kill her when she slighted him. Oswald also resented Marina's growing affection for the United States and its culture, dissuading her from learning English and making her listen to his political rants.

In March of 1963, Oswald purchased a 6.5mm Italian Carcano M1891/38 rifle with a telescopic sight, which he kept with him at the couple's home. Marina disliked guns and resented having a rifle in the house, but Oswald insisted it was necessary. "You're a woman", he would say. "You can't possibly understand why a man must have a gun."

The 6.5mm Carcano M1891/38 rifle Oswald purchased. It would later become the most infamous firearm in US history.

Oswald thought a lot of himself. He was determined to make a place for himself in the world as a hero to communism. One time, he told Marina of an idea he had for the two of them to hijack an airliner and fly to Cuba. Other times, he would talk about defecting to Cuba and joining forces with Fidel Castro's communist dictatorship as a fighter against US imperialism. And above all, he harbored a deep hatred of the United States government and right-wing activists, whom he saw as "fascists" and "imperialists" hell-bent on oppressing the working class.

Now, Oswald was standing with his rifle outside the home of one of his most hated enemies: General Edwin Walker. He had spent weeks stalking Walker, photographing his house, noting his car routes, and drawing up detailed maps of the area.

Edwin Walker's house in Dallas, Texas.

It was 9:00 PM. Though it was already dark outside, Walker's house was brightly lit. Oswald spotted the general sitting at his dining room table, poring over his tax documents. Had Oswald known this, he probably would have found the situation ironic; a man who hated the federal government being gunned down while doing his federal income taxes.

Oswald raised his rifle and acquired the general through his telescopic sight. He fixed his crosshairs on Walker's head. The general was completely oblivious to the armed man only a few feet away outside his window. It was a perfect shot. Walker, Oswald figured, would never know what hit him.

Keeping his rifle aimed at the general's head, Oswald squeezed the trigger and fired.

Hunter of Fascists

General Walker was working on his federal income tax forms, oblivious to the threat only a few feet away. A deafening BOOM broke the silent atmosphere and Walker's dining room window exploded, sending shards of glass, wooden frame, and pieces of copper jacket flying at high velocity all across the room.

Startled, the general immediately dropped to the floor. At first, he had no idea that he had just missed his brush with death. Stupid kids, he thought to himself as he stood up. They're throwing fireworks again.

Then Walker noticed a gaping hole in the wall opposite the window and felt a stinging pain in his left arm. Fragments of a metal copper jacket - the type used in bullets - had torn through his shirt into his forearm, which was bleeding. This was no firework. Someone had taken a shot at him.

The bullet hole left in the wall of Edwin Walker's kitchen

Oswald had come extraordinarily close to killing his target. As the 6.5mm rifle round smashed through Walker's window, it glanced part of the wooden window frame, slightly deflecting its trajectory upwards. That slight deflection caused the bullet to miss General Walker's head by less than an inch - close enough to spray pieces of the bullet's copper jacket into his hair - and strike the wall opposite him.

Walker was a gun owner himself, and he had seen his fair share of combat. Immediately, the general grabbed his own rifle and stormed outside, looking for his would-be killer. But Oswald was long gone. As soon as he had fired the shot, the would-be assassin had taken off running into the night. He hadn't even taken the time to eject the empty shell casing from the rifle, or even check if his target was hit. As he ran into the darkness at full speed, he didn't even know if Walker was alive or dead.

The badly-damaged 6.5mm bullet fired at Edwin Walker by Lee Harvey Oswald, recovered from his kitchen wall by investigators.

Oswald had undertaken his mission with the full understanding that he might not survive. Before leaving, he had left a note to Marina, in which he told her of his plans and informed her of where to find the nearest police station "if I am taken prisoner". 

But luck was with Oswald that night. Though several eyewitnesses had heard the shot, nobody had seen the shooter running away. Some distance away from Walker's house, Oswald hid his rifle in an unknown spot and took a bus home.

When he arrived long after midnight, Oswald found a frantic and concerned Marina waiting for him.

"I just shot Walker", Lee told her, exhilarated. Marina was stunned. She knew all too well of her husband's extremist and radical beliefs, but never before had she thought he was capable of acting on them.

"Is he dead?", asked Marina. "I don't know", her husband replied. "I'll check the radio".

Marina waved Oswald's note in his face. "What is the meaning of this, Alka?", she asked her husband, using his Russian-adopted name. "I don't want to talk now", Oswald answered. He explained he had hidden his rifle, and then went to his room without saying much more. He was eager to hear the fruits of his exploits over the airwaves.

Oswald turned his radio on and tuned it to a news station. Surely someone would have found the general's body by now, he thought to himself. But no mention of the shooting came over the airwaves. Would he finally secure his place in history, striking a blow against one of the far-right's most powerful ideologues? Or would he, yet again, add the Walker killing to his ever-growing list of failures? Oswald went to bed that night unsure if his first attempt on another man's life had succeeded or not.

The next morning, Oswald picked up a copy of the morning newspaper, hoping to see news of Walker's murder splashed across the front page. But he was disappointed. The previous day, the American nuclear submarine USS Thresher had sunk during sea trials with all hands, and the story dominated the news cycle nationwide. Not until Oswald reached the second or third page did he finally learn of his failure.

"SNIPER MISSES HITTING WALKER", read the headline on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "An unseen rifleman fired through a back window and missed controversial ex-Gen. Edwin A. Walker by a scant inch in his home Wednesday night".

The article got some details wrong about the case, much to Oswald's amusement. The police had identified the 6.5mm Carcano rifle round as a .30-06 rifle round, and an eyewitness who claimed to have seen the gunman running away described him as getting into a car with another person a few blocks from the house.

"Stupid Americans", Oswald would tell his wife. "They're so spoiled! They always think you have a car! It never occurs to them that you might use your own two legs! They even got the rifle and the bullet wrong!" (Oswald didn't own a car, or even know how to drive).

But Oswald was disheartened that, yet again, he had failed. "How on earth did I miss him!?", he would repeatedly ask himself in front of Marina. "I had him right in the crosshairs! It was such an easy shot!"

Marina was alarmed. Though she, like Oswald, harbored no love for General Walker, she abhorred violence and was aghast that Oswald had tried to kill him. "This is no way to prove your ideas!", she chastised her husband. "A rifle? If someone doesn't like what you think, does that mean he has the right to shoot you?"

Oswald did little to heed his wife's advice. "I'm not sorry", he would say to her. "I'm only sorry that I missed". 

Marina could have turned her husband over to the police. She had all the evidence to implicate him. But instead of reporting Lee's crime, Marina decided to protect her husband, if only for the sake of keeping her new family together. "What shall we do with these?", she told her husband, showing him his detailed plans for Walker's assassination. "I don't know. Save it as a keepsake", he responded. "I'll hide it somewhere".

"Some keepsake! It's evidence!", Marina admonished her husband. "For God's sake, Alka, destroy it!"

For the first time, Lee listened to his wife. He tore out the pages and photographs from his book, burned them over the toilet, and then flushed the ashes away. Marina held onto Oswald's farewell note, hoping to use it as leverage in case her husband attempted to kill Walker again.

A few days afterwards, Lee and Marina visited the home of George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, two close friends of the family who, despite being anticommunist activists, had taken a liking to Lee. Like everyone in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt knew of the assassination attempt, and he knew of his friend's hatred of General Walker.

"Hey Lee", George greeted his friend with a smile. "How come you missed?"

Lee Oswald turned pale. So did Marina. How did George know? Lee looked towards Marina. Had she told him? But George burst out laughing. He had simply been joking. Never did he suspect that Lee Oswald would have the wherewithal to actually kill Walker. He was totally unaware that his offhand joke had been anything but a joke at all. 

Oswald promised his wife that he would not attempt to kill General Walker a second time. He even promised to get rid of the rifle that he had used in the assassination attempt. But Oswald's promise didn't last long. Though he never attempted to kill Walker again, he ultimately retrieved his rifle from its hiding place a few days following the assassination attempt. Marina would see Lee sitting on the back porch of their home, dry-cycling and dry-firing the Carcano for hours.

One day, Lee approached Marina dressed in a black shirt, long black pants, a .38-caliber revolver in a holster on his hip, and the Carcano in his hand. He wanted Marina to take a picture of him holding the rifle and two socialist newspapers. "What on earth for?", Marina asked. "Just a keepsake", Oswald replied. "I want Junie to have something to remember Papa by."

Marina conceded, and took a series of photographs of Oswald as he posed with his guns and newspapers. She thought the whole charade was silly; another expression of her husband's grandiose ego.

The infamous "backyard photographs" Marina took of Lee Harvey Oswald posing with his rifle, pistol, and leftist newspapers

A few days later, Oswald sent a copy of one of the photos to George de Mohrenschildt. On the back, written in Russian, were the words "Hunter of Fascists - ha ha ha!" - a reference to de Mohrenschildt's prior joke.

But the attempt on Walker's life was the least of the Oswald family's worries. Since he had returned to the US, Lee Oswald had been unable to hold down a steady job, and now with a wife and child (and a second daughter on the way), he had to find a way to provide for his family.

Rebel Without a Cause

Tensions between Lee and Marina continued to worsen as the year went on. On April 24, just two weeks after the attempt on Walker's life, Marina moved out of the house with June and moved in with her friend, a woman named Ruth Paine, in Irving, TX. Oswald went by himself to New Orleans to find work. He told Marina that he would look for a job and, if he found a well-paying one, she could move to New Orleans with him.

A month later, on May 10, Oswald found a job at Reilly's Coffee Factory as a machine cleaner, and Ruth Paine drove Marina and June to New Orleans to meet with him. Lee's new job paid well enough, and the Oswalds settled in a rented apartment in Upper New Orleans.

It was in New Orleans where Oswald continued to explore his radical ideology. On May 24th, he wrote to the headquarters of the pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee", asking to set up a chapter of the organization in New Orleans. The group wrote back, denying his request, but Oswald ignored them and attempted to establish his chapter anyway. Using the false name of "Alek James Hidell" (the same name he had used to purchase both his Carcano rifle and his .38-caliber revolver), Oswald printed leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and frequently passed them out in public.

One of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets Oswald handed out during his time in New Orleans.

Oswald started to make a name for himself. On August 9, 1963, he was arrested after getting into a brawl with anti-Castro Cubans who confronted him as he passed out pro-Castro literature. Oswald reveled in his notoriety, refusing to pay his bail and insisting to police that he be held in jail overnight. After his release the following day, Oswald gave an interview to a local TV station and a radio show, in which he proclaimed himself to be a "Marxist" and a follower of Fidel Castro. He would tell journalists that he had "dozens of members" in his chapter; in reality, nobody had ever joined his group.

A local television station interviews Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans as he distributes pro-Castro literature. Oswald would claim to have "dozens" of members of his chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee - in reality he was the only member.

Oswald didn't stay in New Orleans for long. In July of 1963, Oswald was fired from his job at Reilly's Coffee Factory for frequent absences and substandard work. For a while, he sustained himself on unemployment checks, forcing Marina and June to leave New Orleans on September 23, 1963, and move back to Texas, where they moved in with Ruth Paine.

Oswald didn't go with his wife and child - still determined to find some meaning in his life. An admirer of Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro, Oswald once again came up with a plan to defect. Three days after leaving New Orleans, Oswald boarded a bus in Houston bound for Mexico City. He boasted to other passengers on the bus that he was planning to travel from Mexico City to Cuba and join Fidel Castro's forces. 

On September 27, Oswald entered Mexico City and paid visits to both the Cuban and Soviet consulates. He offered, once again, to defect from the US and join their forces, saying he wanted to do his part to fight American imperialism. But Oswald didn't appear to be valuable to either the Cubans or the Soviets. He spoke little Spanish, and his Russian was described as "terrible" and "hardly recognizable". They turned down his request.

At the Cuban consulate, Oswald became angry and emotional when he learned his application for a visa was denied. He pleaded for them to reconsider, and got into a heated argument with the consulate personnel, which ended with him being told that "a person like you in place of aiding the Cuban Revolution was doing it harm".

Once again, Oswald's attempts to make a name for himself, to be part of something greater than his mediocre life, had ended in failure. Dejected and defeated, he left Mexico City and returned to Dallas, almost entirely penniless. 

Marina and June stayed at Ruth Paine's home in Irving, Texas, but Oswald did not join them. Ruth Paine did not think too highly of Oswald, seeing him as abusive and controlling to Marina and prone to argument. Instead, Oswald rented a tiny one-room apartment in Dallas under the false name "O.H. Lee", and would visit Marina at Ruth Paine's house on weekends.

Despite not particularly liking Oswald, Ruth Paine did manage to find him a job as a book order-filler at the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza. The job paid a minimum-wage $1.25 per hour, but it was a job nonetheless. Oswald took the offer, and on October 16, 1963, he began work at the Depository. 

Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, with the Texas School Book Depository building in the background. Lee Harvey Oswald secured a minimum-wage job as an order filler at the Depository in October, 1963.

Oswald's life was a far cry from what he had once envisioned. His audacious, grandiose visions of himself as a brave militant for communism, fighting against American imperialism on the side of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and his idol Fidel Castro, had - despite his best efforts - never come to fruition. Now he was a nobody, an impoverished, uneducated pauper with a failing marriage, a family he couldn't provide for, a string of unsuccessful jobs, and no clear future. 

And yet it was through his last job, at the Texas School Book Depository, that Oswald would - at long last - secure his place in the world; not as a nobody, but as one of the most infamous people in history.

A month later, fate would bring the lives of the President of the United States and Lee Harvey Oswald together.

The King in Camelot

President John F. Kennedy could not have been a more different man than Lee Harvey Oswald. Born in 1917 into the prominent and wealthy Kennedy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the son of Joseph Kennedy, who had been appointed the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who himself was, ironically, a distant cousin of Lee Harvey Oswald).

John F. Kennedy first gained fame for his heroism in World War II, and later gained national public acclaim as a representative, senator, and later President of the United States. Assuming office at the age of 43, Kennedy remains the youngest person ever elected president in American history.

John F. Kennedy graduated from the prestigious Harvard University and joined the US Navy during World War II. During the war, he commanded the patrol boat PT-109, which was sunk in combat in the Pacific after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer and resulted in him and his surviving crew being marooned on an uninhabited island. Kennedy's survival against all odds, and the ultimate rescue of most of his crew, made him a national hero, and when he returned to the United States he entered politics and quickly rose through the ranks.

In 1947, Kennedy was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Democrat, where he served as a distinctive supporter of immigrant rights, labor unions, workers, and US foreign policy in the emerging Cold War. In 1953, Kennedy was elected Senator of Massachusetts, and he continued to win praise and admiration not just from his own constituents, but from citizens across the country - even from the rival Republican Party. Kennedy was an eloquent public speaker, with a distinctive New England accent, and he made it his business to frequently speak at charities, veterans meetings, and civic events.

In 1953, Kennedy met and married Jacqueline Bouvier, a beautiful young socialite from New York, and the two became icons of the quintessential, happy American couple. Kennedy's progressive policies and emphasis on public and civic engagement won him wide admiration, and he soon began exploring a run for President of the United States. In 1960, Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for president, and in November of that year he defeated Republican challenger Richard Nixon in a narrow election.

Kennedy reads a newspaper announcing his victory in the 1960 Presidential Election.

In the White House, Kennedy's public image continued to remain highly positive. As the first Catholic President of the United States, Kennedy had been met with much skepticism at first, as many Americans felt that a Catholic could not be loyal to both the country and the Vatican, but Kennedy's emphasis on the separation of church and state served to change public opinion, not just on him but on American Catholics as a whole. Irish-Americans and fellow Catholics adored Kennedy, with many Catholic families reportedly even hanging portraits of the young president on their walls.

The Kennedy family also became iconic symbols of American culture. John, Jackie, and their two children - Caroline (born 1957) and John Jr. (born 1960) - enjoyed celebrity status, with the beautiful and enchanting Jackie herself highly praised as one of America's greatest First Ladies for her fashion, her activism towards restoring and preserving historical landmarks, and her fluency in French, Italian, and Spanish. 

President Kennedy, his wife Jackie, and their two children, Caroline and John Jr., pose for a photograph at their family home in Hyannis Park, Massachusetts.

But the Kennedys' private life - like the Oswalds' - had its share of rough spots. John F. Kennedy had suffered debilitating injuries in World War II, and for the rest of his life he was plagued by excruciating back pain, which required frequent surgeries, caused life-threatening medical problems, and put great stress on the family. The Kennedys also suffered from the loss of numerous children, with Jackie having two stillbirths in the 1950s, and an infant son, Patrick, dying two days after he was born in August 1963.

Additionally, Kennedy was a notorious womanizer, and engaged in dozens extramarital affairs and sexual encounters with everyone from a 17-year-old White House intern to famous actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. Jackie wasn't naive of her husband's infidelity (though how much she knew is still unclear) and reportedly had even considered divorcing him at one point.

Nevertheless, the Kennedys' marriage and family remained intact, and by 1963 Kennedy was preparing for his reelection bid the following year. Kennedy had selected Lyndon B. Johnson - a native of Texas - as his running mate in 1960 and had no plans to ditch him in 1964. 

Despite his widespread popularity, President Kennedy's support of the civil rights movement had damaged his support in the deeply conservative South, and the President knew he would need to secure the support of southern states if he wanted to keep his job. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was on track to win the Republican nomination for President, and though he personally supported the civil rights legislation, he had been vocally critical of Kennedy's Civil Rights Act for purportedly being too overreaching on the issue of state's rights.

Political friction had been building in Texas within the Democratic Party over the pending Civil Rights Act, which was strongly opposed by segregationists in the south. Texas senator Ralph Yarbrough had voiced support for the bill, but conservative Democrat John Connally, the governor of Texas, was opposed to it, believing it to be federal overreach. The growing hostility threatened to upend the Democratic Party's hold on Texas - which had narrowly voted for Kennedy in 1960 - and Kennedy wanted to smooth over relations between the two and garner support for the upcoming election. 

Texas Governor John Connally, though privately supportive of civil rights, had been hesitant to support the President's proposed Civil Rights Act for fear of alienating white conservative voters. Tension between him and Texas senator Ralph Yarbrough was one reason Kennedy wanted to visit Dallas and smooth things over in the Democratic Party, which was facing a hotly-contested presidential election the next year.

As part of this reconciliation process, Kennedy decided that he and Vice President Johnson would pay a visit to Texas and meet with both Senator Yarbrough and Governor Connally. The trip was planned to last from November 21 to 24, 1963 and would include a motorcade through downtown Dallas.

The motorcade parade route would take it right by the Texas School Book Depository.

The Deadly Plot

It is unknown exactly when Lee Harvey Oswald decided to kill President Kennedy, or - above all - why. Of all Oswald's many, many grievances, President Kennedy did not appear to be one of them. No evidence has yet surfaced that Oswald had a particular gripe with President Kennedy, though one could imagine that Kennedy's failed invasion of Cuba in 1961 in the Bay of Pigs very well could have disillusioned Oswald with the President. 

Whatever the reason, Oswald's plan to kill Kennedy does not appear to have been extensively planned out like his attempted assassination of General Walker. He probably didn't even know Kennedy was planning to visit Dallas until, at most, 48 hours before that fateful day. The motorcade route was published in the local newspaper on November 20th, 1963, and Oswald - too poor to buy a newspaper - often would read day-old newspapers left in the break room of the Depository. Thus, it is likely that it wasn't until November 21, 1963, that Oswald realized Kennedy would be visiting Dallas and would drive right by his place of work.

Oswald must have realized the implications of what that meant. Undoubtedly, he must have thought to himself that a rifleman could easily shoot the president as he passed by the Depository building. Maybe he could do it. Maybe - after years of failure at trying to become important and famous - Oswald could finally secure his place in history, striking a blow against the most powerful nation in the world - a nation he hated - and show the Soviets that they had underestimated him and his potential.

As an order filler at the Depository, Oswald had unrestricted access to all floors of the building. He often worked on the sixth floor of the depository, where hundreds of massive cartons of textbooks were stacked floor-to-ceiling. Oswald must have walked down the length of windows on the sixth floor overlooking Dealey Plaza, where the Presidential motorcade route was to pass. At the leftmost corner window of the depository, Oswald must have noticed that the window overlooked a tight bend in the road. Any car traveling down the bend would have to slow down considerably to take a turn. It would make anyone below a perfect target for a sniper in the window.

What's more, the sixth floor was undergoing renovation on part of its flooring, meaning that the boxes of books were stacked away from it and higher than usual. Oswald figured he could easily use the boxes to construct a sort of box fort around the corner window. It would make the perfect sniper's nest.

Oswald knew his rifle would be the right weapon for the assassination. His .38 revolver would be too inaccurate at such a range were he to shoot at the Presidential motorcade. Unfortunately for Oswald, his rifle wasn't located in his rooming house; it was stored in the garage of Ruth Paine's home, where his wife was staying. What's more, today was a Thursday. Oswald wasn't supposed to come by the house until Friday. He would just have to invent an excuse.

Oswald took some heavy brown wrapping paper from the depository and used tape to fashion a crude paper bag which he would use to bring his rifle to work the following day. Obviously, he knew he couldn't stroll into work carrying his rifle out in the open. But Oswald had a ready-made excuse for that, too. 

After his work shift ended for the day, Oswald approached his coworker, 19-year-old Buell Wesley Frazier. Frazier lived in Irving on the same street as Ruth Paine, and he would often let Oswald come home with him on Fridays so Oswald could visit Marina and the kids. Marina had given birth to the couple's second daughter, Audrey, only 32 days earlier.

The home in Irving, Texas, where Marina Oswald stayed with her friend, Ruth Paine. Unknown to Ruth, Oswald kept his rifle in the house's garage.

"Hey, Wesley", Oswald asked his coworker. "Can you drive me home to Irving today?"

Frazier was surprised. Oswald had never asked him to drive him home on a Thursday. "Why are you going home today?", he asked.

"I'm going home to get some curtain rods", Oswald responded. "You know, to put it an apartment".

"Sure. Like I told you, anytime you want to go see your kids just let me know", Frazier responded. But Oswald was lying; his apartment room already had curtains and rods fully installed. It was the first in a long string of lies that Oswald would tell over the next three days.

"Are you going to go out to Irving tomorrow night too?", Frazier asked.

"No", Oswald replied without further elaboration.

When Oswald arrived at the Paine home, Marina and Ruth were startled to see him. Marina was visibly upset at her husband's unannounced appearance, apologizing to Ruth Paine and giving Oswald the cold shoulder. Marina had learned that Oswald had registered his room at the boarding house under the false name "O.H. Lee", and she was upset with her husband. The secrecy and subterfuge scared her, and reminded her of his plan to kill General Walker.

Lee's behavior during the night is still questionable. Though by this point he had clearly put a plan together to kill President Kennedy, it appears, judging by his behavior, that he was still having second thoughts.

Oswald tried to make amends with Marina that night. After spending some time with June and Rachel, Lee approached Marina and tried to convince her to move out of the Paine home and move back with him. He said he had found an apartment for them, and that if she wanted they could check it out the next day. He even promised to buy her a washing machine she had always wanted.

But Marina's anger at her husband could not be overcome by his promises. She turned him down. Lee became hurt and lashed out. "Fine!", he angrily spat. "You get too much spoiling here anyway!". He stormed out of the room.

Later that night, the topic of President Kennedy's visit to Dallas came up. Marina wanted to see the Presidential motorcade but Lee seemed curiously unenthusiastic about the president's visit. He refused to tell Marina where the parade route was going.

Oswald went to bed early that night, still hurt and upset over Marina's rejection. Secretly, Marina was pleased that her husband was trying to mend their troubled marriage, but she wasn't about to let him know that. When she got into bed with him and tried to touch his leg with her own, he kicked it away.

Sometime later that night, long after both Ruth and Marina were fast asleep, Oswald entered the Paines' garage, turned on the light, and found his Carcano rifle, wrapped in a plaid green blanket. Oswald didn't have much ammunition, having expended the others at target practice. Only four rounds remained - not even enough for a full magazine. Those would have to be enough. He disassembled his weapon and slipped the pieces and the four bullets into his brown paper bag before exiting the garage, leaving the light on.

The green and brown plaid blanket which Oswald used to contain his rifle in the Paine garage.

Sometime later, probably after midnight, Lee Oswald got into bed and went back to sleep. It would be his last as a free man.

Nut Country

President Kennedy awoke in Suite 850 of the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, 1963, and began preparing for the upcoming day. He was greeted by an unwelcoming full-page ad in the morning newspaper. "WELCOME MR. KENNEDY TO DALLAS", read the ad, paid for by the right-wing "American Fact-Finding Committee". The ad went on to accuse Kennedy of being "soft on communists, fellow travelers, and ultra-leftists" while using his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to "persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership".

Kennedy was incensed. "Be careful", he warned Jackie, still in bed, as he got dressed. "We're heading into nut country today". 

"But Jackie", he added ominously, "if someone wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?"

Kennedy was no stranger to threats of death. He had received thousands during his time in politics - mainly from right-wingers who hated his support of the civil rights movement. In 1960, while Kennedy was president-elect, he had been the target of an assassination attempt. A mentally-disturbed man named Richard Pavlick, who harbored a festering hatred of Catholics, had plotted to kill Kennedy with a bomb. Armed with a suitcase packed with explosives, Pavlick intended to walk up to Kennedy as he arrived at an airport in Palm Beach, Florida, and detonate the suitcase, killing the president-elect in the blast along with himself. However, at the last minute, the assassin had second thoughts after seeing Kennedy's young children waving at him, and he aborted his plot. Pavlick would later be arrested and committed to an asylum. It was a close call, but it revealed to Kennedy just how vulnerable he was, and how close to death he had come.

Jackie took a while to get up. She had stayed up late the previous night and was reluctant to wake up so early. At 8:45 AM, President Kennedy went downstairs without Jackie, joining Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally outside to address a gathering crowd of admirers in the rain. "There are no faint hearts in Fort Worth, and I appreciate your being here this morning", he spoke. But the crowd was restless. "Where's Jackie? Where's Jackie?", they chanted.

"Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself", the President joked. "It takes longer, but, of course, she looks much better than we do when she does it."

President Kennedy speaks to the crowd outside the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, 1963

At 9:00 AM, the President and his entourage went into the dining room of the hotel to host the morning breakfast for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, but Jackie had still not come downstairs. President Kennedy continued to use his humor to stall for time. "Two years ago, I introduced myself in Paris by saying I was the man who accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris", he spoke as the crowd roared with laughter. "I'm getting somewhat the same sensation as I travel around Texas. Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear".

At last, Jackie Kennedy arrived at the breakfast, dressed in a bright pink wool suit with a pink cap - one of the finest clothes in her wardrobe. The crowd cheered at the sight of the pretty young woman as she joined her husband at the table.

The suit would later become an infamous symbol of the events that would transpire later in the day.

John F. Kennedy speaks to the attendees of the Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Texas Hotel. Jackie Kennedy can be seen next to him, wearing her now-infamous pink suit.

Earlier that morning in Irving, Texas, Lee Oswald awoke early at the Paine home. He told Marina not to get up; he would make his own breakfast. He fixed himself a cup of coffee and then returned to the bedroom. "I won't be back tonight", he told Marina. He then picked up his brown paper bag containing the disassembled Carcano rifle and left the house for the last time, walking the half-block over to Wesley Frazier's house.

Frazier was having breakfast with his sister, mother, and three nieces when Oswald appeared and peered in through the window.

Frazier's mother noticed Lee carrying a strange, oblong package in a vertical position under his right arm. "Who is that?", she asked.

"That is Lee", Frazier replied. He had told his family about his coworker before, but Lee had never before walked up to his house. Usually, Oswald just waited on the sidewalk for Frazier to pick him up.

"Well, time to go", Frazier told his family. He walked out the back door and met Oswald by his car. The pair got into the two front seats and Frazier noticed that Oswald had placed a long brown package in the backseat. "What's in the package, Lee?", Frazier asked.

"Curtain rods", Oswald replied.

"Oh yes, you told me you were going to bring some today".

The long brown paper bag Oswald used to smuggle his disassembled Carcano rifle into the Depository. He told his coworker that it contained "curtain rods" for his apartment.

"Did you have fun yesterday playing with the babies?", Frazier asked. Oswald chuckled. "Yes I did. Junie's starting to grow up fast".

Frazier noticed that Oswald hadn't brought any lunch with him. "Lee, where's your lunch?", he asked. "Oh, I'm gonna buy lunch today", Oswald replied. Oswald could barely afford to buy lunch, and had always brought food from home, but Frazier thought nothing of it.

When the pair arrived at the parking lot behind the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, at approximately 7:52 AM, Oswald grabbed his package and began walking fast towards the entrance. Again, this was unusual for Oswald. Usually, he and Wesley Frazier walked together to work, but this time Oswald was striding far ahead of his coworker, concealing his oblong package underneath his coat.

Oswald entered the back of the depository and walked up the stairs to the sixth floor. There, alone among the towers of book boxes, Oswald assembled his rifle and inserted the brass en bloc clip containing four rounds into the rifle's magazine. Then Oswald hid the rifle somewhere on the sixth floor, grabbed his clipboard, and began filling orders as usual. He knew the president wouldn't arrive until later that day. For the next four hours, at least, he would go about his work, patiently waiting for the president to come into his sights.

The Last Hour

At 11:38 AM, Air Force One touched down at Love Field at Dallas after a short flight from Fort Worth. The entire motorcade had lined up in preparation for President Kennedy's arrival. After proceeding down the city of Dallas, Kennedy was to appear at the Dallas Trade Mart, where he would give a speech at a luncheon attended by civic and religious leaders. The procession was supposed to leave at noon, but so enthralled was the crowd with the President and Mrs. Kennedy that they stayed to shake hands with the hundreds of admirers at Love Field.

President Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy are greeted by throngs of supporters as they arrive at Love Field in Dallas.

Not everyone at Love Field was supportive of President Kennedy. Among the throngs of supporters, several white supremacists stood by waving Confederate flags and carrying signs disparaging the President for his support of the civil rights movement. But for all his prior warnings about going into "nut country", President Kennedy seemed unfazed by the few hecklers in the crowd, enthralled by the hundreds of well-wishers who were eager to meet the President and his wife.

Not everyone in Dallas was happy to see President Kennedy. These white supremacist protesters demonstrated at Love Field as the President and his entourage arrived.

In Dallas, the weather was clear and sunny, unlike the rainy weather that had greeted the President in Fort Worth, and Kennedy wanted the limousine roof removed so he could wave to the crowds. President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy got into the Presidential limousine - a modified, glossy, dark-blue 1961 Lincoln Continental flown in from Washington DC - and sat in the back seats. In the front two jump seats, directly behind the two Secret Service men in the driver's and passenger's seat, sat Governor Connolly - wearing his trademark white Stetson hat - and his wife Nellie. Behind the car drove a second limousine packed with Secret Service agents. Normally, they would be covering the Presidential limousine in case of an assassination attempt, but President Kennedy disliked having his Secret Service detail around him in public, and he requested that they not cover the car during the parade.

It would prove to be a fatal mistake.

President Kennedy, Jackie, Governor Connolly, and Nellie Connolly ride in the Presidential Limousine through the streets of Dallas on their way to the Dallas Trade Mart, waving to thousands of cheering spectators along the parade route.
The President would never make it to his destination.

In Dealey Plaza, crowds of onlookers began to gather around Elm Street to await the Presidential Motorcade's arrival. The Texas School Book Depository decided to allow employees to take an unscheduled break from work so they could watch the motorcade pass. Most employees went downstairs to the street to see the President pass. But one employee didn't.

Lee Harvey Oswald was on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He had not filled any orders for the day; his clipboard would later be found blank. As his coworkers took the elevator to the ground floor, Oswald shouted for them to send the elevator back up once they got down, but he never went down to join them.

Instead, Oswald waited until the floor was empty, and then went to retrieve his hidden Carcano rifle. He quickly shifted and stacked several boxes of books to screen off the corner window from the stairs, and stacked three more smaller boxes in front of the window to create a gun rest. Oswald then opened the window overlooking the bend on Elm Street, where he knew the President's motorcade would pass through. It was approximately 12:15 PM when he did so. President Kennedy would not arrive for another 15 minutes. For now, with his rifle at his side, Oswald waited.

The corner window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, screened off by a wall of boxes erected by Lee Harvey Oswald

Several people on the ground would notice the man with a rifle in the corner window of the 6th floor of the Depository building. A few of them believed he was a Secret Service agent, watching over the crowd to protect the President from an assassin. None of them reported the man to authorities.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy were riding in the open-top limousine, flanked by four police officers on motorcycles, through the streets of Dallas on the way to the Trade Mart. Thousands of enthusiastic and overjoyed spectators cheered the President as he passed, throwing flowers and confetti. President Kennedy even stopped the procession several times to shake hands with onlookers, including several Catholic nuns and a group of schoolchildren. The Secret Service men riding in the car behind the limousine were uncomfortable with how close President Kennedy got to the spectators, but they followed the President's orders to stand down.

As the car proceeded towards Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connolly turned around to face President Kennedy. "Mr. President", she said, "you certainly can't say that Dallas doesn't love you!"

The President smiled his trademark grin. "No, you certainly can't", he replied.

Those were the last words he would ever speak.

Camelot's End

As the Presidential Motorcade slowly crossed down Elm Street, Lee Oswald must have noticed the Presidential Limousine and Jackie Kennedy's eye-catching bright pink suit. As soon as he saw the limousine, he must have known President Kennedy was in it. The car was slowly approaching the Depository as the President waved to the crowd of spectators along the road.

A still from a home movie made by Robert Hughes shows the Presidential Limousine passing in front of the Texas School Book Depository. A figure can be faintly seen in the open sixth-floor corner window.

Oswald could have fired at Kennedy from the front as he approached, but it would have been a difficult shot. He would have to line up his sights, lowering his rifle, and time it just right. But this was too prone to error. If he missed, all eyes - including those of the Secret Service agents in the car behind the president - would instantly turn towards the window where Oswald was located. No, it wasn't worth the risk. Oswald held his fire as the limousine slowed and took the sharp bend in the road, proceeding slowly towards the exit for the freeway and passing near a grassy knoll to the right of the road.

As the presidential limousine began driving away from Oswald, Kennedy became essentially a stationary target. Though he was moving, his profile stayed relatively still from Oswald's perspective. It was perfect for a sniper shot.

The view from the sixth-floor corner window of the Depository, looking down Elm Street.

The time was 12:30 PM. Oswald raised his rifle and took aim at the back of Kennedy's head, acquiring his target through the crosshairs of his scope. For the second time in his life, Oswald was preparing to kill a man.

A teenage boy in Dealey Plaza saw the long barrel of the rifle pointing out the depository. At first, he thought it was a pipe. Then he noticed the man holding it. His eye was glued to a scope, and he wore a sneer on his face.

Oswald squeezed the trigger. As he did, the Presidential Limousine passed under a tree, briefly obstructing Oswald's aim. The rifle fired, but Oswald - again - missed his target. The bullet struck the metal frame of a traffic light, deflecting its trajectory and sending it flying across the plaza, where it smashed into a sidewalk curb, spraying fragments of concrete and metal into the air and injuring bystander James Tague in the face.

Oswald's first shot missed the Presidential Limousine entirely, with the bullet ricocheting off of the frame of a traffic light and striking a curb on the other side of the plaza, causing minor injuries to a bystander's face. Aside from some microscopic streaks of metal recovered from the concrete, the bullet or bullet fragment that hit the curb has never been found.

President Kennedy heard the shot. So did Jackie. Kennedy lowered his hand and looked around. Jackie spun around in her seat to look behind. Neither one seemed to know what the sound was. Some bystanders thought it was a motorcycle backfire. Others thought it was a firework set off by some pranksters. But John Connally - an experienced hunter - knew immediately what the sound was. It was a rifle shot. Someone was shooting at the president. "Oh, no no no!", he yelled as he turned to the right, looking back to see if Kennedy was hit.

Oswald knew he had missed. But instead of running like he had done with General Walker seven months earlier, Oswald decided that he would finish the job. He pulled back the bolt, ejected the spent shell casing from the rifle, and then shoved the bolt forward, chambering a second round. He again raised the rifle and took aim at the president again.

3.4 seconds had elapsed. Oswald squeezed the trigger on his rifle again and fired a second shot.

This time, Oswald didn't miss. The 6.5mm bullet tore a hole into President Kennedy's upper back, exited out his throat, hit Governor Connolly in the back, exited the governor's chest, hit the governor's right wrist, fracturing the radial bone, before exiting and tearing into the governor's left thigh, where it became lodged.

The impact of the bullet propelled Kennedy forward, and he raised his arms in a defensive gesture towards his throat, with his fists clenched. He must have known by now that he had been shot. Connolly knew he'd been hit, too. "They're going to kill us all!", the governor yelled as he fell back towards his wife, who pulled him down out of the line of fire. Connolly began to lose consciousness, and as he passed out, he believed he was dying.

President Kennedy's arms were locked in place from nerve damage. He undoubtedly knew full well by now what was happening, but, due to the wound in his throat, he couldn't speak. Jackie turned back towards her husband, who could only manage to make some sickening rasping noises through his injured throat. Jackie was perplexed. She still didn't know what was going on. She looked into her husband's eyes and leaned in towards his face. "What's wrong, Jack?", she asked.

This photograph, taken right after the second shot was fired, shows President Kennedy raising his arms after being hit in the back, with Jackie's white-gloved hand reaching out to touch him (circled). Note that the agents on the Secret Service car, having heard the shot, are looking back towards the Texas School Book Depository.

In the Secret Service car, a few of the agents had begun to realize that Kennedy had been shot. Special Agent Clint Hill, standing on the forward part of the car, immediately jumped to the pavement and began running towards the Presidential Limousine. He knew he had to get on top of the president and shield him from any further bullets. Though Kennedy was wounded, none of his vital organs had been damaged. The primary risk to the President's life at this point was shock and loss of blood. He still had a chance for survival.

Oswald ejected the spent shell casing from his rifle and chambered his third round. Again, he trained his scope crosshairs on the back of the President's head and squeezed the trigger. This was it - this was his chance to make history, to finally make a name for himself and secure his place in history for the ages.

8.4 seconds had elapsed. Oswald fired his third shot.

The 6.5mm bullet cracked through the air at supersonic speed. It sliced through Kennedy's scalp and tore through the back of his skull and into his brain, exiting out his forehead. The right side of the president's head exploded, spraying a ghastly reddish-pink cloud of blood, brain matter, skull fragments, and hair into the air. The blood splattered all over the car and Mrs. Kennedy, the face of a nearby police officer, and the windshield of the Secret Service car behind the limousine.

To Clint Hill, the sound resembled someone smacking a grapefruit or watermelon with a baseball bat.

The President's limp body crumpled back and to the left, a flap of skull peeling off the right side of his head as he fell. "Oh no!", Mrs. Kennedy screamed. "They shot Jack! They shot my husband!"

The infamous "Zapruder film", shot by Jewish-American businessman Abraham Zapruder on his home camera from the Grassy Knoll, captures the entire assassination of President Kennedy, from the first shot to the last. This version of the film has been zoomed, enhanced, and slowed down slightly to show the assassination in greater detail.

Oswald must have seen the devastating impact of his shot through his rifle scope, and the cloud of red mist that followed it. He knew that he'd just killed the president. Oswald ejected the spent shell casing and chambered his fourth and final round. But instead of firing another shot, the assassin slowly withdrew his rifle from the window, paused a minute as if to ensure he'd hit his target, and then darted away into the shadows.

This picture, taken seconds after Lee Harvey Oswald withdrew his rifle, shows the open sixth floor window from where the shots were fired. Two perplexed Depository employees can be seen in the fifth-floor windows directly below the sniper's nest.

Jackie Kennedy spotted a piece of her husband's skull on the trunk of the limousine. Immediately, she climbed out of her seat and sprawled on the trunk of the car, reaching out.

Clint Hill was aghast. Jackie Kennedy was now exposing herself to the assassin's fire. He quickly grabbed onto the back handlebars of the limousine, vaulted himself onto the trunk, and ushered Jackie back into the car.

"My God, they've shot his head off!", she screamed. She cradled the President's body. "Can you hear me Jack? Jack, I love you, Jack!", she cried. "Jack, what did they do to you!?"

Clint Hill was horrified. The interior of the limousine was covered in blood, brains, and skull fragments. The right rear side of the president's head was missing. "He's dead", Clint exclaimed. He knew the president's wound was fatal. Nobody could survive a wound like that.

The Presidential Limousine rapidly sped towards the underpass at the end of Elm Street. Clint Hill pounded his fist on the trunk in despair, before turning around and signaling the following Secret Service car with a thumbs-down. The President had been shot, and it wasn't looking good.

The Presidential Limousine sped towards Parkland Hospital, the nearest medical center available.

The sniper's nest in the sixth-floor window as found by police. The three shell casings from Oswald's rifle can be seen lying on the floor.

Back in the Depository, Oswald ran diagonally from the window towards the stairwell on the other side of the sixth floor. He must have been exhilarated. He had finally done the unthinkable. He had finally secured his place in history, having done what nobody else - not even the Soviets or his hero Fidel Castro - could have done. He had struck a blow against the country he hated, killing the most powerful man in the world.

But Oswald had no time to celebrate. Officers were rapidly closing in on the Depository building. He didn't even have time to disassemble his rifle and slip the pieces back into the brown paper bag. Instead, Oswald shoved the Carcano rifle into a narrow space between some stacks of boxes and dashed down the stairs.

Oswald shoved his rifle between several stacks of boxes as he fled the sixth floor following the shooting of President Kennedy. It would later be found by investigators.

Right as he reached the second floor, Oswald must have heard footsteps going up. The building's manager, Roy Truly, and a motorcycle police officer were climbing up the stairs in search of the gunman. Quickly, Oswald darted into a nearby lunchroom.

The officer spotted Oswald and drew his service revolver. "You!", he yelled, leveling his gun at the young man. "Come here!". Oswald cautiously turned around and faced the officer. "Do you know this person?", the officer asked Roy Truly. "Yes, he works here", the manager replied. Immediately, the officer turned and continued up the stairs towards the roof. He never assumed the assassin could have been an employee of the depository.

Oswald bought himself a coke from a vending machine and continued down the stairs. He briefly passed through the secretary's office. The secretary, Geraldine Reid, had just returned to the building after witnessing the shooting in Dealey Plaza when she encountered Oswald.

"Oh, the President's been shot!", she told Oswald, "But maybe they didn't hit him".

Oswald mumbled an unintelligible reply and quickly left the office. His behavior seemed odd, but Mrs. Reid didn't think much of it.

Oswald walked out the front entrance of the depository into the street below. By now, Dealey Plaza was enveloped in chaos. Less than three minutes had elapsed since the three shots were fired. Terrified civilians, fearful of more gunmen, lay on the ground, some shielding their children. Others - mostly men - ran off towards the Grassy Knoll, mistakenly believing they had heard shots coming from the fence just behind it. Officers ran back and forth, trying to secure the area and locate the source of the gunfire.

Oswald must have found the whole situation amusing. Here he was, having just committed the most infamous crime in American history, and he had just strolled out of the building unimpeded. The assassin walked down Elm Street away from the scene of his crime and boarded a bus, but after becoming stuck in traffic, Oswald got off the bus and hailed a taxi. He knew the police would eventually find his rifle, and he wanted to return to his rooming house to get his revolver before continuing his flight.

The President is Dead

Even before President Kennedy had arrived at Parkland Hospital, news of the shooting in Dealey Plaza had already started to spread across the country. At 12:40 PM, viewers tuning in to the CBS soap opera "As The World Turns" were suddenly interrupted by a "CBS NEWS BULLETIN" screen on their television. Amidst the sound of shuffling papers, the voice of CBS news broadcaster Walter Cronkite was heard:

"Here is a bulletin from CBS News", said Cronkite, who was off camera. "In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting."

Cronkite paused. "More details have just arrived", he added. "These details about the same as previously. President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She called 'Oh no!'. The motorcade sped on. United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal. Repeating, a bulletin from CBS News, President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details".

CBS then returned to its regularly-scheduled programming, only to be interrupted by another bulletin only two minutes later. The network would ultimately suspend all planned programming in favor of live, wall-to-wall coverage of the attack in Dallas, this time with a live picture of the CBS newsroom with Cronkite at his desk. Walter Cronkite would provide minute-by-minute coverage of the events as the continued to unfold. Only two months earlier, Cronkite had the privilege of interviewing President Kennedy in person. Now, he would become an iconic figure in the President's death.

-

The Presidential Limousine pulled up to the emergency room entrance at Parkland Hospital at approximately 12:36 PM. Agents quickly swarmed the parking lot with their guns drawn. None of the hospital staff knew that the president had been shot.

"Get us two medical stretchers on wheels!", an agent yelled. The hospital staff complied. Slowly, they lifted the wounded Governor Connally - who was losing blood fast and lapsing in and out of consciousness - onto a stretcher. Though critically wounded, Connally's vital organs were undamaged. He would later undergo surgery and would be stabilized.

But President Kennedy was not so fortunate. Jackie Kennedy knew it, and she would not let her husband go. She curled up over President Kennedy's face and tearfully crooned, trying to shield her husband's shattered head from onlookers.

"They murdered my husband", she wept. "They killed Jack".

"Please, Mrs. Kennedy", said an agent. "You need to get out."

"There's no need", the widow replied. "He's dead"

Clint Hill - who was Jackie's personal secret service agent - tried to persuade Jackie to release her husband. "Please, Mrs. Kennedy", he pleaded. "We need to get the President to a doctor"
But Jackie still wouldn't leave her husband. "No, Mr. Hill. I'm not going to let him go", she wept. "You know he's dead. Let me alone."

"Please, Mrs. Kennedy", Hill repeated. He touched her arm in a gesture of understanding.

Finally, Jackie released her grip on her husband's body. Clint Hill removed his jacket and used it to cover the President's head, shielding it from onlookers. The hospital staff gingerly lifted Kennedy's body and placed it on a stretcher.

Agents and police surround the Presidential Limousine outside Parkland Hospital

The hospital staff wheeled the President into Trauma Room One of Parkland Hospital. The surgeons cut off his clothes and checked him for vital signs. The President's eyes were open, but the pupils were dilated and fixed, unresponsive to light. His face was pale and ashen gray. He had no blood pressure. He had a faint heartbeat, but it was erratic and weak. He was faintly breathing, but it was labored, sporadic, and shallow.

For all intents and purposes, President Kennedy had died instantly back on Elm Street the moment Oswald's shot had hit him in the head. The bullet had destroyed much of the right side of his brain. He was completely unresponsive and unreactive. Had he been anyone else, President Kennedy would have already been declared dead on arrival at Parkland Hospital. But the hospital staff had to try something. The President still had some faint - if negligible - vital signs. They knew it would be a futile effort, but they had to try everything before they could accept the obvious.

The surgeons prepared blood transfusions and inserted IV lines into the President's veins. They cut open a tracheotomy in his throat, around the wound left by Oswald's second shot, and inserted a tube to help his breathing. Another doctor opened a hole in the president's chest and inserted a second tube to drain any air or fluid that had accumulated in his lungs.

Trauma Room One at Parkland Hospital. In this room, doctors worked frantically to try and save President Kennedy's life, to no avail.

Jackie Kennedy was trying to enter the trauma room when a burly nurse blocked her way. "Please", she told the nurse, "I want to be with him when he dies."

An admiral backed up Jackie. "It's her prerogative. It's her right", he told the nurse.

The nurse let Jackie pass. By now the trauma room was crowded with medical personnel and Secret Service agents. By now, the President had stopped breathing, and doctors were frantically working to hook him up to a respirator. 

Jackie Kennedy nudged one of the surgeons and opened her cupped hands. She was holding a piece of her husband's brain matter. The surgeon took it and put it in the the gaping wound in the President's head.

Another doctor activated the respirator. The President began faintly breathing again, and his heartbeat improved, but it was still far from adequate.

Jackie turned to one of the agents. "Do you think... he has a chance?", she asked. The agents didn't have the heart to tell her what they - and she - already knew. "By God," replied one agent, "it's a thousand-to-one chance he'll live". 

The time was now 1:00 PM. The President - despite efforts from the doctors to restore his vitals - had stopped breathing again. A doctor checked the carotid artery in the President's neck. "No pulse", he reported. He began an external cardiac massage to try and restart the president's heartbeat.

A second doctor checked Kennedy's femoral artery. "I got a pulse", he reported. He again tried to rhythmically stimulate the President's heartbeat, but again, the president went into cardiac arrest.

The surgeons stopped and looked at the cardiac monitor. It was trailing in a straight line. Whatever life the president had left in him when he arrived in the emergency room was gone. There was nothing more they could do. John F. Kennedy was dead. The surgeons pulled a white sheet over his face.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Kennedy", the doctor told Jackie. "Your husband has suffered a fatal wound."

Jackie closed her eyes in grief. "I know", she whispered.

-

At CBS News headquarters, Walter Cronkite was busy keeping the millions of viewers updated on the events in Dallas. CBS had received numerous reports of the President's death, but Cronkite would not confirm the rumors until he had official confirmation. Like millions of Americans sitting on the edge of their seats across the country, Cronkite continued to hold out hope for President Kennedy's life to the very end.

But at 1:38 PM, Cronkite received the official confirmation of his worst fears. In a scene that has become an infamous symbol of the assassination, Cronkite opened up the piece of paper and read it to the world. "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1PM, Central Standard Time... 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago".

CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite chokes back tears as he announces the death of President John F. Kennedy.

Cronkite removed his glasses and blinked rapidly as his voice began to crack. His eyes welled up with tears as he stared down at his desk. A second later, he composed himself and cleared his throat before continuing. "Vice President Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded. Presumably, he will be taking the oath of office shortly, and become the 36th President of the United States".

-

At Ruth Paine's home, Marina was taking care of her two children when Ruth Paine burst into the room. "The President has been shot", she told Marina. "They say he is dead".

Marina was horrified. Despite coming from the Soviet Union, she had grown to love America and the Kennedys. Both Ruth and Marina began to cry.

"By the way", added Ruth, "they fired from the building where Lee is working".

In an instant, Marina's hair stood on end. Was this tragedy Lee's doing? She was the only one who knew of his attempt to kill General Walker. What if he was at it again? It was just like him to try something like this.

Though Ruth Paine had no idea that Lee owned a gun, Marina knew Lee kept his rifle in the Paine garage under a blanket. Had he come by yesterday to get the rifle? When she had a moment, Marina slipped into the garage. She saw the blanket lying on the floor. Without lifting it, she breathed a sigh of relief. The rifle was still there, she thought to herself. Maybe it wasn't him after all.

-

Officer Down

Around the same time President Kennedy was declared dead at Parkland Hospital, Oswald arrived at his rooming home after taking a taxi from Dealey Plaza. The assassin quickly went to his room, changed his shirt, put on a light gray jacket, and grabbed his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 10 "Victory" revolver, along with 11 rounds of ammunition. Knowing that the police would eventually trace the rifle to him, he didn't stay at the rooming house for long. Oswald had no desire to be taken prisoner. He was still free, still unidentified, and still a few steps ahead of the police.

The .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 10 "Victory" revolver owned by Lee Harvey Oswald

After picking up his pistol, Oswald walked out of his rooming house at about 1:03 PM and began walking south. Nobody knows where Oswald was planning to go. He had only $13 in his pocket - barely enough for a bus fare. Perhaps he intended to catch a bus to the Mexican border. Perhaps, triumphant in his killing of the President, he would approach the Cubans and Soviets again, once again offering to defect. Surely, he may have thought, they wouldn't turn him down this time. After all, he had done what neither of them had been able to do: strike down the most hated enemy of the communist bloc.

Or perhaps Oswald had no plan. After all, his behavior that morning at Ruth Paine's home - including leaving almost all of his money and his wedding ring behind - seems to indicate that he did not expect to survive the assassination attempt. Now here he was, a few steps ahead of the police but with nowhere to run. Perhaps he was simply wandering, wondering what to do next.

At 1:00 PM, an alert went out over the Dallas Police Department radio, giving a description of the man witnesses had seen in the window of the Texas School Book Depository with a rifle: "Attention all squads. Attention all squads. At Elm and Houston, reported to be an unknown white male, approximately 30, slender build, height 5-foot 10-inches, 165 pounds. Reported to be armed with what is thought to be a .30-caliber rifle. No further description or information at this time."

Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, 39, had just returned to duty after having lunch with his wife and was patrolling the Oak Cliff area in his squad car when the call came out. At 1:08 PM, as he drove down East 10th street, Tippit spotted Oswald walking on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, less than a mile from his boarding house. Tippit must have believed that Oswald resembled the description of the suspect. "78", he called into his radio, using his numerical code. There was no response. "78", Tippit repeated. He may have been trying to call in Oswald's description to see if it was at all similar to the description of the sniper in Dealey Plaza, but he received no answer.

Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit, 39, was patrolling the Oak Cliff section of Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated. He would have a fatal encounter with the President's killer.

Regardless, Tippit found Oswald suspicious enough to tail him. He slowly drove up to Oswald, pulled alongside the young man, and called out to him. Oswald walked over to the passenger's side window of Tippit's patrol car and leaned in, exchanging words with Tippit. Nobody knows what they discussed. Perhaps Tippit questioned Oswald about where he was going. Either way, Oswald's behavior didn't satisfy Tippit. The officer opened the door of his patrol car and stepped out, walking towards the front of the car towards Oswald.

At that moment, Oswald took two steps back and quickly drew his revolver. Tippit saw Oswald's weapon and began to reach for his own revolver, but he wasn't fast enough. Oswald rapidly fired four shots in quick succession across the hood of the car, hitting Tippit three times in the abdomen. The officer collapsed to the ground, fatally wounded and gasping for air.

Officer J.D. Tippit's patrol car sits at the side of the road where he was shot.

Oswald hesitated, then walked around the back of the car and stood over the fallen officer. Tippit was fatally wounded, bleeding out, but still alive and fumbling for his gun. Oswald paused, then raised his revolver, took aim at Tippit's head, and fired a fifth shot into the officer's head, killing him instantly.

A bloodstain on the pavement marks where Officer Tippit was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Tippit left behind a wife and three young children.

Oswald stopped and looked around. A few eyewitnesses saw the shooting, but Oswald paid little attention. He began briskly walking away from the murder scene, smirking as he opened the revolver's cylinder and removed the five spent cartridge cases and threw them to the pavement. "Poor damn cop", a witness heard him sneer. "Poor damn cop". 

Four of the spent .38-caliber casings left by Oswald as he fled the scene of the Tippit murder. The fifth casing has not been found.

As Oswald left the scene, a group of male witnesses came upon Tippit's body and saw Oswald striding away. One of them grabbed the fallen officer's K38 service revolver and began to give chase. Other witnesses joined him.

Once a few steps ahead of the police, Lee Oswald was now running for his life.

-

Back at the Texas School Book Depository, police had surrounded and sealed off the entire building. Numerous eyewitnesses had reported shots being fired from the sixth floor, and police were busy searching among the hundreds of book boxes for evidence.

Coming upon the open window on the corner of the sixth floor, officers noticed that the boxes had been stacked to screen off the window from the stairs. In front of the window, officers found three shell casings lying on the floor. Clearly, this was where the sniper had fired his weapon. But where was the rifle?

It wasn't until half an hour after the building had been sealed that an officer noticed the Carcano rifle shoved between several boxes. A round was still in the chamber, and the brass en-bloc clip was still in the magazine. The police photographed the rifle before clearing the chamber and carrying the weapon outside.

A Dallas police detective carries Oswald's abandoned Carcano rifle out of the Depository.

As the gun was removed, the officers did a roll call of Depository employees. Only two were missing. One was an employee who had gone outside to watch the motorcade and had been unable to return when the building was sealed off. He was quickly found and accounted for.

The other employee - who could not be accounted for - was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Cornered

Back on Jefferson Avenue, Oswald had managed to evade his pursuers for the time being. He ducked behind a machine shop and took off his gray jacket, possibly trying to change his appearance. He shoved the jacket underneath a parked car, put his pistol back into his waistband, and began leisurely walking down the street.

By now, the entire area was swarming with police officers. The Dallas Police Department had already gone on high alert after the President was shot. Now, one of their own officers had been gunned down. This time, it was personal. The police weren't sure if the shooting of Kennedy was connected - though some officers must have undoubtedly had their suspicions - but they knew that Officer Tippit's killer had to be in the area.

Oswald was strolling down Jefferson Avenue in front of a shoe store at about 1:36 PM when a pair of police cars, sirens blaring, flew by on the road. A clerk at the store noticed that, as the sirens approached, Oswald turned his back to the street, walked into the entrance alcove, and pretended to study the display window of the store. That behavior made the clerk suspicious. After the police cars passed, Oswald continued walking down the street, and the clerk stepped outside to watch where he went.

A cinema known as the Texas Theatre was diagonally across the street from the shoe store. The shoe store clerk watched as Oswald stealthily slinked past the ticket booth and ducked into the theater without paying. The clerk phoned the police.

After killing Officer Tippit, Oswald hid in the Texas Theatre, where he would later be apprehended.

Inside the cinema, Oswald entered a theater which was screening an old black-and-white war film, entitled "WAR IS HELL". Only a few people occupied the seats in the theater. Oswald went to the back rows and sat down.

By 1:48 PM, the Texas Theatre was surrounded by squad cars, police officers, reporters, and curious onlookers. Rumors spread across the crowd that the killer of a Dallas policeman was inside. A group of officers - one carrying a shotgun - entered the building, accompanied by an eyewitness to the Tippit killing.

The officers entered the theater at 1:50 and turned on the lights. The eyewitness pointed out Oswald to the officers. The killer was sitting three rows from the back of the theater, near the projection booth. The policemen began to close in.

"Get on your feet", an officer ordered Oswald. The killer started to comply. "Well", he said, "it's all over now". In a flash, Oswald punched the officer in the face, knocking him backwards. The officer leapt up and punched him back. "Kill the President, did you!?", he yelled.

"This is it!", screamed Oswald. He reached for his revolver and pulled it out of his waistband. "Look out, he's got a gun!", someone yelled. An officer grabbed the gun's cylinder and held it to prevent it from firing, pushing the barrel away from his face. Another officer struck Oswald across the back of the head with the butt of a shotgun. A third officer began punching him in the face.

More officers piled onto Oswald, beating, kicking, and pulling him across the aisle, trying to keep the gun's muzzle away from their faces. Finally, an officer pried the revolver from Oswald's hands and pinned him to the floor.

Oswald was completely overpowered. "Don't hit me anymore!", he yelled. "I am not resisting arrest!"

As the officers cuffed Oswald's hands behind his back, he began to shout. "I protest police brutality! I protest police brutality! I know my rights! They're violating my civil rights!", he yelled.

Police officers overpower Oswald inside the Texas theater and place him under arrest

The officers dragged Oswald out of the building and out into the street. A crowd of onlookers began to jeer as Oswald was dragged away towards a patrol car. "Lynch him! Let's hang the son-of-a-bitch!", someone yelled. The angry mob began to swarm the police, trying to administer vigilante justice to the suspected murderer, but the police held the mob back. Oswald was shoved into the backseat of a waiting squad car as he continued to protest his treatment. "They're violating my rights!", he shouted. "I want my lawyer! I know my rights! Typical police brutality! Why are you doing this to me? Is this America!?"

Lee Harvey Oswald is dragged from the Texas Theatre by Dallas police officers to a waiting squad car.

Inside the car, Oswald continued on his diatribe. "What is this all about? I know my rights! I haven't done anything wrong! All I've done is carry a pistol into a movie. I don't understand why you're treating me like this!"

An officer sitting in front turned around. "Sir, you have done a lot more. You've killed a policeman".

"Police officer been killed?", Oswald asked innocently, with a slight smirk on his face. "I hear they burn for murder", he said, referring to the electric chair. "You fry for that."

"You might find out", the cop replied.

"Well", Oswald added, "they say it just takes a second to die".

"What's your name?", asked a second officer. Oswald remained silent.

An officer searched Oswald's pocket and took out his wallet. He took out a library card. "Lee H. Oswald", the officer read. He removed a second card - a fake military selective service ID with Oswald's photo on it. "A. J. Hidell", the officer read.

"Which one is your real name?", he asked his captive. But Oswald remained silent. "You find out", he replied.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Back at Parkland Hospital, the body of President Kennedy was prepared for autopsy. The wounds were washed, his shattered head was wrapped in gauze, and he was zipped in a body bag, which itself was lowered into a cheap aluminum casket. Texas state law had jurisdiction over all homicide cases at the time - even the President - and the law mandated that President Kennedy's body be kept for an autopsy at the county coroner's office.

But President Kennedy's entourage - especially the Secret Service agents on his detail - wanted only to get out of Dallas. They didn't want to spend another minute in the city that had brought them the death of their respected commander. After the President's body was loaded into the casket, the Secret Service prepared to wheel it out and take it back to Washington.

It was 2:08 PM, a little more than an hour after John F. Kennedy had been declared dead. As the Secret Service agents wheeled the body towards the exit, the Dallas County medical examiner, Earl Rose, stepped in front of them, accompanied by a local justice, Theron Ward. "The body stays here", Rose said.

Agent Roy Kellerman - who had been in the Presidential Limousine next to the driver, stepped up. "My friend, this is the body of the President of the United States", he said tersely, "and we are going to take it back to Washington."

"No, that's not the way things are", replied Rose. "When there's a homicide, we have an autopsy."

Tempers began to rise. "To hell with that!", Kellerman exclaimed. "He's the President! He's going with us!"

"No, the body stays", Rose insisted again. "This is how things are done here".

Kellerman's temper began to rise. "My friend, my name is Roy Kellerman", he stated authoritatively. "I am Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail of the Secret Service. We are taking President Kennedy back to the capital".

"No, you are not", replied Rose. "You're not taking the body anywhere. There's a law here. We're going to enforce it."

The President's personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, stepped up to defend Kellerman. "Please, we cannot keep Mrs. Kennedy waiting", he told Rose.

"No, the remains stay!", repeated Rose.

"It's the President of the United States!", Burkley shouted angrily. "We are taking him!"

"That doesn't matter!", the coroner replied. "You can't lose the chain of evidence!"

Burkley became furious. He tried to push the body past the coroner, but Rose blocked him.

"We are removing it!", the physician shouted. "This is the President and there should be an exception for this!"

"I don't care!", Rose screamed, his temper rising too. "We can't release anything! There's a law here! We are going to enforce it!"

The justice of the peace, Theron Ward, joined in on Rose's side. He chose his words poorly. "It's just another homicide case as far as I'm concerned", he told the agents.

At that, Kellerman's temper exploded in a flash. "GO FUCK YOURSELF!!!", he roared as his face turned bright red. He turned back to his fellow agents. "WE'RE LEAVING! WE'RE LEAVING NOW! WHEEL IT OUT!".

The agents shoved Rose and the justice aside as they rolled the President's coffin out of the room. Though the agents had good reasons, both emotional and practical, to want to bring the President's body back to Washington, the truth was that the law was not on their side. Later, the circumstances surrounding autopsy of the President - which was not done by the proper authorities - would become a major source of suspicion by conspiracy-minded individuals seeking to cast doubt on the official story.

The President's body was taken back to Love Field, with Jackie Kennedy - still wearing her bloodstained pink suit - following closely behind. She had stopped crying and was now in a state of shock. The agents loaded the body of President Kennedy onto Air Force One, where Vice President Lyndon Johnson and other members of the President's detail had already gathered.

Secret Service agents load the casket carrying the body of President Kennedy onto Air Force One.

Vice President Johnson knew, statutorily, that he was already the President of the United States. As soon as John F. Kennedy had been declared dead, Johnson had, by constitution, become the 36th President. But Johnson wanted to make it official. He wanted to be sworn in on the plane, feeling the officiality of the occasion would signal that the United States was still resilient and would move forward through this tragedy.

With cameramen taking pictures, and with Jackie Kennedy at his side, Lyndon B. Johnson was administered the Oath of Office aboard Air Force One and sworn in as the 36th President of the United States. There was no applause, no celebration, and no congratulation. It was a grim - but necessary - symbol of America's resolve in the face of tragedy.

With a dazed Jackie Kennedy at his side, Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One to become the 36th President of the United States

As Air Force One took off, word came through to the FBI that a suspect had been arrested in Dallas for the murder of a policeman, and that authorities suspected that he might be the assassin who murdered President Kennedy. When the suspect's name was revealed - Lee Harvey Oswald - the FBI agents went cold. They knew who he was. The Bureau had kept a file on Oswald from when he had tried to defect to Russia to when he returned to the States. They knew he was an outspoken Marxist. Had they just let the murderer of the President of the United States slip right under their noses?

When Jackie heard the news, she was devastated. Before a suspect had been arrested, the authorities believed that the killer of President Kennedy had been a right-wing extremist incensed over the President's support of civil rights. But the killer wasn't a right-wing extremist. He was a leftist. Her husband's death now seemed even more meaningless. "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights", Jackie ruminated. "It had to be some silly little communist".

"I Didn't Shoot Anybody"

Back in Dallas, the police car carrying Lee Harvey Oswald pulled into Dallas City Hall, where the Dallas Police headquarters were located. A crowd of reporters were already waiting at the station, having heard news that the suspected killer of Officer Tippit - and likely the killer of President Kennedy - had been captured.

"You might want to cover your face", one of the officers told Oswald as the car pulled into the garage. "Why should I hide my face?", Oswald replied cooly. "I haven't done anything I should be ashamed of."

The time was 2:00 PM. Oswald was led into the station, where he would be fingerprinted and photographed. As he was led inside, by sheer coincidence, Oswald was walked past his foreman, Bill Shelley, who was giving a statement to the Dallas Police. Shelley recognized his employee. "Well, that's Oswald", Shelley told an officer as he pointed to the suspect. "He works for us. He's one of my boys. I'm his supervisor."

Police officers escort a disheveled Lee Harvey Oswald into Dallas City Hall, where the Dallas Police Headquarters were located.

Oswald was sat down in a detective's office. In a few minutes, Dallas homicide detective Will Fritz would arrive to interrogate him. Fritz was an experienced and renown cop and had experience in extracting confessions from tight-lipped suspects. Even though Oswald hadn't been accused of it yet - having only been told he was arrested for the murder of Officer Tippit - Fritz was sure that Oswald was the same man who killed President Kennedy.

The office of Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz. Here, Oswald would be subjected to numerous interrogations during his time in custody.

In the interrogation room, two detectives began asking Oswald some routine questions. "What's your name?", asked one officer.

"Hidell", Oswald replied, giving the officers his false name. The detective found an identification for an "Alek James Hidell" in the suspect's wallet, but found another card bearing the name "Lee H. Oswald". He asked the suspect which name was his real one.

"You find out", Oswald replied.

Though Oswald was probably amused at playing games with police, his identification of himself as "Hidell" was a major slip-up. Because Oswald had used the false name "Alek James Hidell" when purchasing both the rifle used to kill Kennedy and the pistol used to kill Tippit, when the weapons would inevitably be traced to their sellers, the records on file would list an "A. Hidell" as their purchaser. By giving officers his false name of "Hidell", Oswald had - with his first answer - admitted that the guns used in the murders of Kennedy and Tippit were both his.

At 2:20 PM, Captain Will Fritz and Detective Elmer Boyd entered the interrogation room to question Oswald. Boyd noticed that Oswald had a bruised cut above his eye. "Well, I hit an officer and the officer hit me back", Oswald explained, "which he should have done".

Fritz quickly got down to business. "What's your full name?", he asked.

This time, the suspect told the truth. "Lee Harvey Oswald", he answered.

"Where do you work?", asked Fritz.

"The Texas School Book Depository", Oswald answered.

"How did you get the job?", Fritz questioned.

"A lady I knew recommended it for me and I got it through her", he replied.

Fritz wanted to ask about "Hidell". "Why do you have a card that identifies you as Alek James Hidell?", he asked.

Oswald shrugged it off. "Oh, that's just a name I picked up in New Orleans".

Yet again, Oswald had, through his answers, further incriminated himself in the killings of Tippit and Kennedy. Now, by revealing his real name in addition to his fake name - and openly admitting that he used the name "Alek James Hidell" - Oswald had yet again tied himself to the ownership of both murder weapons. Furthermore, Oswald had also admitted that he worked in the same building from which the shots that killed President Kennedy were fired. 

The FBI had been made aware of Oswald's arrest by now. One agent, James Hosty, knew Oswald well. He had kept a file on Lee ever since he tried to defect to Russia four years earlier, and on two occasions he had questioned Marina in interrogation sessions that left her husband enraged. In fact, only a few days earlier, Oswald had left a threatening note for Hosty in which he threatened to blow up the FBI office if they didn't leave his wife alone.

Now, Agent Hosty arrived at the station to join in the interrogation of Oswald. It would be the first time he would meet Oswald in person.

At 3:00 PM, Agent Hosty and fellow FBI agent James Bookhout entered the interrogation room to join Captain Fritz. Hosty introduced himself. "Mr. Oswald", he began calmly, "I'm Special Agent James Hosty of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and this is Special Agent James Bookhout."

Immediately, Oswald exploded.

"Oh, so YOU'RE Hosty! I've heard about you! You're the agent who's been harassing my wife!", he snarled.

"You have the right to remain silent", Hosty told the prisoner, ignoring his hostility. "Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law."

But Oswald's temper continued to rise. "My wife is a Russian citizen who is here legally and is protected under diplomatic laws from harassment by you or anyone else from the FBI!", he yelled. "You accosted my wife! You're no better than the Gestapo of Nazi Germany!"

Captain Fritz was alarmed at Oswald's temper. He quickly jumped in. "What do you mean he accosted your wife?", he asked.

"Well, he threatened her", Oswald told Fritz. "He practically told her she'd have to go back to Russia. He accosted her on two different occasions!".

Oswald began to complain about his handcuffs. His arms were cuffed behind his back and it was clearly uncomfortable. "Can you take these handcuffs off me, please?", the suspect asked his interrogator.

Fritz thought it over. "Well, keep them on, but cuff his hands in front of his body", he told detectives. 

After his hands were re-cuffed in front of him, Oswald seemed to calm down. "Thank you, thank you", he told Fritz. He turned to Agent Hosty. "I'm sorry for blowing up at you, and I'm sorry for writing that letter to you", he apologized.

With his suspect having calmed down, Fritz decided to resume his questioning.

"Do you own a rifle, Lee?", he asked.

"No, I don't", Oswald replied.

"Have you ever seen a rifle in the Texas School Book Depository?"

"Well, I saw Mr. Truly, my supervisor at work, he had one at the Depository on Wednesday, I think it was", Oswald lied. "He was showing it to some people in his office on the first floor."

Oswald was now trying to deflect suspicion towards his own employer and away from himself. Fritz sensed it, and he tried to bring the conversation back around. "Have you ever owned a rifle?", he asked.

"Oh, I had one a good many years ago. It was a small rifle, a .22 or something", he answered, "but I haven't owned one for a long time."

At that moment, Agent Hosty jumped in. The FBI knew of Oswald's trip to Mexico City and his visit to the Soviet Embassy, which had been under surveillance by the CIA at the time. He wanted to know more. "Have you ever been to Mexico City?", he asked.

Oswald hesitated. "Sure, sure, I've been to Mexico", he answered, evading the question. "When I was stationed in San Diego with the Marines, a couple of my buddies and I would occasionally drive down to Tijuana over the weekend".

"Have you ever been to Russia?", Hosty asked.

Oswald rolled his eyes. "Yes, you know I have", he answered, growing annoyed. "My wife has relatives over there and she and I still have many friends".

"Did you ever own a rifle in Russia?", Fritz interrupted, trying to bring the conversation back around.

Oswald chuckled. "You know you can't own a rifle in Russia", he smirked. "I had a shotgun over there. You can't own a rifle in Russia".

Hosty interrupted again. "Have you ever been in contact with the Soviet embassy?"

Oswald grew annoyed again. "Yes, I contacted the Soviet embassy regarding my wife!", he snapped. "And the reason was because you've accosted her twice already!"

Hosty continued to press Oswald. "Have you ever been to Mexico City? Not Tijuana. Mexico City."

Oswald exploded again. He slammed his fists down on the table. "No!", he yelled. "I've never been there! What makes you think I've been to Mexico City!? I deny it!"

"Okay, okay", Fritz interjected. He didn't want to agitate Oswald any further. Fritz began to ask Oswald some routine questions about his life and his time in the military. "Did you win any medals for rifle shooting in the Marines?", he asked.

"Oh, just the usual medals", Oswald replied modestly. "I got an award for marksmanship". 

Fritz changed the subject. "Did you work in the Depository today?"

"Yes"

"How long have you worked there?"

"Since October 15th"

"What part of the building were you in at the time the President was shot?", Fritz asked.

"I was on the first floor eating lunch", Oswald answered. "I was on the second floor drinking a Coke when an officer came in".

"Then what?", Fritz continued.

"I left"

"Where did you go when you left work?"

"I went over to my room on Beckley, changed my trousers, got my pistol, and went to the movies", Oswald replied innocently.

"Why did you take your pistol?", Fritz asked.

"I felt like it", the suspect answered.

Fritz wasn't having it. "You felt like it?"

"You know how boys are when they have a gun. They just carry it.", Oswald lamely answered.

Now Fritz hit Oswald with his direct questions. "Did you shoot Officer Tippit?"

"No I didn't", Oswald denied. "The only law I violated was when I hit the officer in the show, and he hit me in the eye and I guess I deserved it. That's the only law I violated. That's the only thing I did wrong."

"Did you shoot the President?", Fritz asked.

"No, I emphatically deny that", Oswald answered. "I haven't shot anybody. I don't want to answer any more questions".

"Okay," Fritz said, "let's take a break".

---

Back at the Paine home, Marina and Ruth were still unaware that Oswald had been taken into custody for the President's murder. Marina still believed her husband's rifle was in the garage. Her initial suspicions of his involvement had been dispelled. But she had not heard anything from her husband. She had no idea that he was currently under arrest.

At 3:30 PM, six plainclothes detectives converged on Ruth Paine's home in Irving, Texas, and knocked on the door. Ruth Paine answered. Immediately, she sensed why they were there.

"This is about the President being shot, isn't it?", she askied.

"Yes", answered one detective. "We have Lee Oswald in custody. He is charged with shooting an officer. We would like to search the house."

"Do you have a warrant?", Ruth asked. "No, but we can get one if you wish", the officer answered. "That won't be necessary", Ruth assured them. "Come on in. We've been expecting you. Just as soon as we heard where it happened, we figured someone would be out."

Marina was holding the infant June when the detectives entered. Marina didn't speak much English, so the officers asked Ruth Paine - who spoke Russian - to translate for them.

Captain Fritz was accompanying the officers. "Ask her if her husband has a rifle", he told Ruth.

At first, Marina denied that he did. But suddenly, she changed her answer. "Yes, he does have", she told Fritz in broken English before speaking Russian to Ruth. Ruth turned to the officers and said "It's in the garage, under a blanket."

Marina felt relieved. She still believed the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. Well, she figured, now they'll find it and they'll know it wasn't him.

One of the detectives reached down and picked up the blanket. It sagged in his hands. The blanket was empty. Marina went pale and gasped.

Now she knew. Right then and there, she knew immediately that her husband had committed the assassination of President Kennedy.

Sparky

As Oswald sat in his cell between interrogations and photo lineups, Air Force One touched down at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Robert F. Kennedy - who by now knew his brother was dead - immediately raced aboard the plane. He met Jackie in the tail section and embraced her.

"Hi Jackie", he consoled her. "I'm here."

"Oh Bobby!", Jackie cried.

President Kennedy's body was removed from the aircraft to be taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy would be performed. As the casket, draped in an American flag, was loaded into a hearse, Jackie emerged and began to walk down the stairs, still clad in her blood-spattered pink suit. News cameras captured the event live on television, and millions of Americans were horrified at the ghastly sight of the First Lady covered in her husband's blood.

Jackie refused to change clothes before leaving the plane. "Let them see what they did", she told others.

President Johnson walked up to a microphone, where he made his first public statement as commander-in-chief. "This is a sad time for all people", he said solemnly. Johnson had always had ambitions of becoming President one day, but never had he wanted it to come about like this. "We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed", he continued. "For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help, and God's."

Though President Johnson now moved into the White House, he knew that Jackie and her children would need time to cope with their loss. He informed Jackie that she was welcome to stay in the White House as long as she wanted to. He would not pressure her to move out. She would be welcome to leave on her own terms.

At Bethesda Naval Hospital, pathologists would determine that President Kennedy had been hit twice, once in the upper back and once in the head. Both shots were determined to have come from behind. No evidence of any other bullet wounds was found on the President's body. 

Autopsy photographs taken of the wound to President Kennedy's head, showing an entrance wound at the back and an exit wound at the front. No shots were found to have come from anywhere else except from behind.

_

Throughout the afternoon and evening of November 22, 1963, evidence continued to build against Lee Harvey Oswald. Posing for several photo lineups, multiple witnesses who had seen Officer Tippit's killing positively identified Oswald as the shooter. 

Lee Harvey Oswald's official mugshots, taken by the Dallas Police following his arrest. He bears evidence of his fight with police officers during his arrest - one of his eyes is swollen and a cut is visible above his other eye.

What's more, detectives had already traced the serial numbers on the Carcano and the revolver to different sporting goods stores, and though the original order forms had long since been destroyed, microfilm copies were still on record. The records revealed that the M1891/38 Carcano rifle had been purchased by mail order from Klein's Sporting Goods by an "A. Hidell", who listed an address at P.O. Box 2915 in Dallas, Texas. The .38-caliber Smith and Wesson Model 10 "Victory" revolver had been purchased by mail order from Seaport Traders in Chicago. The purchaser used the name "A. J. Hidell" and listed the same address - P.O. Box 2915 in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, the handwriting on the order forms was being matched to samples of Oswald's handwriting.

The order receipts for the Carcano rifle (left) and .38-caliber revolver (right) used in the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. Both show the weapons were shipped to an "A. Hidell" who rented P.O. Box 2915 in Dallas, TX - the same post office box Oswald admitted owning.

Captain Fritz continued to interrogate Oswald intermittently throughout the night. He returned to question Oswald, armed with the evidence he had gathered at the Paine home.

"Did you keep a rifle in Mrs. Paine's garage in Irving?", he asked.

"No", Oswald replied.

"Didn't you bring one with you when you came back to Dallas from New Orleans?"

"No, I didn't"

"Well,", continued Fritz, "the people out at the Paine residence say you did have a rifle, and that you kept it out there wrapped in a blanket".

"That isn't true", Oswald snapped.

Fritz leaned back. "You know you've killed the president. This is a very serious charge."

Oswald smirked. "No, I haven't killed the president."

"Well,", Fritz continued, "the President has been killed."

Oswald sneered. "Yeah, well, the people will forget that in a few days and there will be another president". 

By now, it was well into the night. Many of the detectives were starting to tire. Oswald, however, was as awake as ever. It seemed he relished in his newfound infamy and reveled in playing games with investigators. For the first time in his life, Oswald felt he had obtained the importance he felt he always deserved.

Reporters crowded the hallways of the police station, and as Oswald was escorted back and forth between interrogations and photo lineups, he was thrust into the cameras and microphones of dozens of journalists eager to get a statement from him.

"Did you kill the president?", shouted a reporter at Oswald.

"No, sir. Nobody charged me with that", Oswald replied. It was another evasive answer.

"Were you there when the President was killed?", shouted another.

"I work in that building", Oswald replied. "Naturally if I work in that building, yes sir."

"They've taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union", Oswald raised his voice as detectives shoved him through a doorway. "I'm just a patsy!".

Oswald speaks to reporters as Dallas police officers escort him down the hall. During his interactions with the press, Oswald would continue to deny his guilt and play dumb.

As Oswald was again being moved, he again denied his guilt to reporters. "I don't know what kind of dispatches you people have been getting, but I emphatically deny these charges!", he angrily told reporters as he was hustled past the crowd. 

At 7:10 PM, Oswald was brought before Judge David Johnston to be formally charged with the murder of Officer Tippit. "Mr. Oswald", Judge Johnston said, "We're here to arraign you on the charge of murder in the death of Officer J.D. Tippit".

Oswald erupted. "Arraignment!?", he yelled. "You can't arraign me in a police station! This isn't a court! How do I know this is a judge!?"

"Shut up and listen!", an officer ordered the irate suspect.

Oswald mumbled angrily. "The way you're treating me, I may as well be in Russia."

Judge Johnston read out the charge. "Lee Harvey Oswald, hereinafter styled Defendant, heretofore on or about the twenty-second day of November, 1963, in the County of Dallas and State of Texas, did then and there unlawfully, voluntarily, and with malice aforethought kill J.D. Tippit by shooting him with a gun against the peace and dignity of the State".

A Dallas police detective parades Oswald's Carcano rifle past the press as he brings it to a room for examination.

Shortly before midnight on November 22, Oswald was paraded in front of the press again. A judge had just presented him with a formal charge for the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, and he was to soon be charged with the murder of President Kennedy. It was to be his first and only official press conference. As Oswald was led down the hall into the booking room where the press waited, he raised his manacled fist in a defiant salute.

The hallway was packed with reporters and cameramen filming the event. When Oswald, still in handcuffs, was escorted by detectives into the room, he immediately took the opportunity to bask in his newfound glory. It would later become known as the infamous "Midnight Press Conference".

Lee Oswald raises a defiant fist to cameramen as he is escorted by police to a press conference in Dallas Police Headquarters.

"I was questioned by a judge without legal representation", Oswald complained to reporters. "Well, I was questioned by a judge. However I protested at that time that I was not allowed legal representation. During that, uh, that, uh very short and sweet hearing. Uh, I really don't know what this situation is about. Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of, uh, murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that and I do request that, uh, someone come forward, uh, to give me legal assistance."

Lee Harvey Oswald speaks to reporters at the infamous "Midnight Press Conference" in Dallas Police headquarters.

A reporter interjected with a question. "Did you kill the president?"

Oswald was quick to respond. "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."

"You have been charged", another reporter told him.

Oswald was taken aback. "Sir?"

"You have been charged", he repeated.

Oswald turned his gaze downward and bit his lip. For once, he didn't have an answer.

The detectives had had enough. They began to push Oswald away. Reporters kept on yelling questions. "What did you do in Russia", yelled one reporter. "How did you hurt your eye? Oswald, how did you hurt your eye?"

Oswald gave a short answer. "A policeman hit me".

At 1:35 AM on November 23, Oswald was led once again to Judge Johnston, this time to be charged with President Kennedy's murder.

"Oh, I guess this is the trial", Oswald sarcastically remarked. 

"No sir", replied Judge Johnston, ignoring the suspect's attitude. "I'm here to arraign you on another offense." He opened the charge and read it:

"Lee Harvey Oswald, hereinafter styled Defendant, heretofore on or about the twenty-second day of November, 1963, in the County of Dallas and State of Texas, did then and there unlawfully, voluntarily, and with malice aforethought kill John F. Kennedy by shooting him with a gun against the peace and dignity of the State".

The two affidavits officially charging Oswald with the murders of J.D. Tippit and President John F. Kennedy.

Oswald continued to mumble. "I don't know what you're talking about. That's the deal, isn't it?"

"You have the right to an attorney", Johnston told Oswald.

"I want Mr. John Abt of New York", Oswald said.

"You'll be given the opportunity to contact any attorney you wish", the judge replied. "Bond is denied on this capital offense. I hereby remand you to the custody of the sheriff of Dallas County, Texas."

_

One of the people who attended Oswald's midnight press conference was not a reporter. He wasn't a cameraman, journalist, detective, or investigator. Sitting in the back, wearing sunglasses and a suit, he carried in his pocket a .38-caliber revolver. He was a dog-lover and a nightclub owner, well known among the Dallas Police Department and the city's criminal underworld. He had a short temper, which had earned him the nickname "Sparky", and like millions of Americans he was incensed at the murder of President Kennedy. In less than 36 hours, he would, like Oswald, change the course of history forever.

His name was Jack Ruby.

Jack Ruby, wearing a black suit and glasses, can be seen in the back of the room during the Midnight Press Conference. He had intended to kill Oswald that night, but ultimately backed out.

-

Jacob Leon Rubenstein - better known as Jack Ruby - was a man cut from very much the same cloth as Lee Harvey Oswald. Born in Chicago in 1911 to a poor Jewish family of Polish descent, Ruby had suffered from childhood psychomotor epilepsy that left him with organic brain damage, and he had a long history of behavioral problems. Like Oswald, Ruby's early years were marked with incidents of truancy, delinquency, and family instability. His mother, like Oswald's, was temperamental and abusive, being committed to mental hospitals multiple times, and Ruby was frequently placed in foster care.

Jack Ruby was well known for having an unpredictable temper and an impulsive lifestyle. A nightclub owner in a seedy area of Dallas, Ruby had alleged connections to organized crime, though these allegations have never been substantiated.

Ruby's short, explosive temper was his most well-known trait. It earned him the nickname "Sparky", though Ruby hated that nickname and was quick to fight anyone who used it. 

Like Oswald, Ruby served in the US military. In 1943, he was drafted into the US Air Force and served as a mechanic until 1946, when he was discharged. Returning to Chicago, Ruby engaged in a short series of failed business deals until he moved to Dallas the following year, where he established the "Carousel Nightclub", a striptease club in one of the seedier areas of the city.

Despite his aversion to social conformity, Ruby had great respect for law enforcement. Whenever Dallas cops would show up at his nightclub, Ruby made sure to show them a good time. He offered them free drinks and dances and became friends with many of the officers. Though Ruby never married, he lived in the company of his dogs, including his favorite, a dachshund he named "Sheba". Ruby would often call Sheba his "wife", and his other dogs his "children" - comments that would raise eyebrows among his friends.

Ruby also had a deep respect for President John F. Kennedy. He had once thrown a patron out of his club after the man made a disparaging remark about the President, and he was hostile towards anyone who didn't share his intense patriotism. Though he did not watch the presidential motorcade, when Ruby heard that Kennedy had been assassinated, he burst into tears and called his sister to tell her the news. Ruby's sister would later recall "He cried harder when President Kennedy was killed than when Ma and Pa died".

Ruby ordered that his nightclub be closed for the entire weekend out of mourning for the President, and became incensed when other nightclubs didn't do the same. Later that night, posing as a "translator for reporters", Ruby infiltrated the midnight press conference. He was armed with his .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver. The enraged Ruby had intended to shoot Oswald during the press conference - a fitting end for a man who had gunned down his beloved president. But the crowding in the room made it impossible for Ruby to get off a shot. He didn't want to hit any of the police officers in the room. He ultimately didn't follow through on his plan to kill Oswald - for now.

November 23

At 8:00 AM on November 23, 1963, Oswald awoke in his cell for a breakfast of stewed apricots, oatmeal, bread, and black coffee. Throughout the day, he would pose for a series of lineups and be subjected to multiple interrogations. By now, the entire world knew of his deed, and Lee Oswald was now the most hated man in America.

Lee Harvey Oswald poses for a police lineup, one day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy

Death threats poured into the Dallas Police Department. Callers threatened to storm the jail and lynch Oswald. Others threatened to shoot him as he was being transferred. Despite the threats, Dallas Police did not take any of them seriously and security around Oswald would remain lax. It would later prove to be a fatal mistake.

At 10:25 AM, Oswald was summoned from his cell to Captain Fritz's office, where he was subjected to another round of questioning. Fritz asked Oswald what he did when he left work the previous day.

"I took a bus to my residence, and when I got off I got a transfer and used it to take another bus over to the theater where I was arrested", Oswald told Fritz.

By now, Dallas cops had interviewed Wesley Frazier who had told them that he had driven Oswald to work and that Oswald had carried a long brown package of "curtain rods". Fritz wanted to know more.

"Lee, did you bring curtain rods to work with you yesterday morning?", he asked.

"No"

"You didn't bring any curtain rods with you?"

"No, I didn't", Oswald repeated.

Fritz wasn't buying it. "Well, the fella that drove you to work yesterday morning tells us that you had a package in the backseat. He says that package was about 28 inches long and you told him it was curtain rods."

Oswald continued to deny it. "No, I don't know what he's talking about. I had my lunch and that's all I had".

It was another lie, and one that could easily be disproven.

Fritz quickly shifted topic again. "Did you ride a taxicab yesterday?", he asked.

"Well, yes I did", Oswald answered quickly. It was another slip-up. Oswald had just told Fritz that he had ridden a bus to the movie theater. He had said nothing about a cab.

Fritz jumped on him. "I thought you said you rode a bus home", he puzzled.

Oswald quickly realized his mistake. In a panic, he invented a new story. "Well, that's not exactly true", he acknowledged. "Actually, I did board a bus at the Depository but after a block or two it got stuck in traffic, so I got off and took a cab back to my room."

"Did you talk to the driver during the ride home?", Fritz asked.

"He told me the president had been shot", Oswald replied.

It was another lie. In fact, the taxi driver had asked Oswald about the commotion in Dealey Plaza, to which Oswald gave no reply. The driver had no idea that President Kennedy had been shot.

Oswald continued to slip up on his story and invent new scenarios. The conversation turned towards the firearms that the authorities had traced to "A. Hidell". 

"Have you ever ordered guns through the mail?", Fritz asked Oswald.

Oswald again denied it. "I've never ordered guns", he said, "and I don't have any receipts for any guns."

"Well, Lee", said Fritz, "if you've never ordered a gun or purchased a gun like you say, then where did you get the pistol you had on you at the time of your arrest?"

Oswald had been caught in a lie again. "Oh, I bought that about seven months ago", he dismissed. Oswald had, yet again, implicated himself in the crime. By now, police knew that the revolver had been purchased by an "A.J. Hidell". By admitting he had purchased the pistol, Oswald had once again admitted his connection to the Hidell alias, and by extension the rifle he kept denying he owned.

The money order form used to purchase the Carcano rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods. The purchaser, "A. Hidell", registered his address at the same P.O. box Oswald admitted owning, and the handwriting on the form would later be positively matched to samples of Oswald's handwriting.

Fritz laid out the fake selective service card bearing Oswald's photograph and "Alek James Hidell" alias that had been taken from the suspect's wallet. "Did you sign this card?"

Oswald evaded the question. "I carried it, yes".

"What did you use it for?"

"I'm not answering that."

This fake selective service card bearing Oswald's picture and the name "Alek James Hidell" was recovered from Oswald's wallet after his arrest.

Fritz once again turned the topic to the assassination. "Did you shoot the president?"

Oswald once again denied his guilt. "No, I didn't."

"Did you shoot the governor?"

"No, I didn't know that the governor had been shot".

Fritz ended the session. "Okay, that's enough", he told detectives. "Take him back to his cell."

As Oswald was hustled away, he turned to the crowd of reporters waiting in the hall. "I'd like to contact Mr. Abt, A-B-T, Mr. Abt in New York to defend me", Oswald said to the newsmen.

With Oswald now charged with two counts of murder with malice for killing President Kennedy and Officer Tippit, the case would now go to a grand jury. Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade told reporters that he expected the case to go before a grand jury, on either November 27th or December 2nd, for a formal indictment to be issued.

Wade was an experienced prosecutor. During his tenure as District Attorney, he had sought the death penalty in 24 murder cases, winning a death sentence in 23 of them. He told reporters that he would seek death in the electric chair for Oswald on both counts of murder with malice once the formal indictment was handed down. He felt it was near certain that Oswald would be found guilty and sentenced to death. The case was open and shut. 

Henry Wade was the district attorney of Dallas County, TX, in 1963. He planned to personally prosecute Lee Harvey Oswald for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit.

Wade told reporters that he expected the case to go to trial in mid-January of 1964, and that he would personally prosecute the case. Though he didn't say it, Wade undoubtedly knew that, were he to win a conviction and death sentence against the murderer of the President, he would instantly become the most famous prosecutor in America. It wasn't a chance he was going to pass up.

_

At 1:15 PM, Marina, June, Oswald's mother Marguarite, and Oswald's brother Robert arrived at the Dallas City Hall where Oswald was being held. They were allowed to visit Lee as he sat in a secure waiting room on the fourth floor. It was to be their only meeting with Lee.

Marina sat down across from Lee, separated by a glass screen. She picked up a phone to speak to her husband through the divider. The two began speaking in Russian.

Lee saw his mother standing behind Marina. "Why did you bring this fool here? I don't want to talk to her", he angrily cursed over the phone.

"She's your mother. Of course she came!", replied Marina. She noticed the bruise on Oswald's face. "Have they been beating you?"

"Oh no, they treat me fine", Oswald assured her. "Did you bring Junie and Rachel?"

"They're downstairs", Marina replied. "Alka, can we talk about anything we like?"

"Oh, of course!", Oswald replied sarcastically. He assumed the conversation was being monitored. "We can talk about absolutely anything!"

Marina began to cry. "They asked me about the gun", she told her husband.

Lee, who had spent the past day repeatedly denying that he owned a rifle, was quick to dismiss the comment. "Oh, that's nothing", he told Marina. "There is a lawyer in New York who will help me. You shouldn't worry. Everything will be fine."

Lee began to cry too, though he tried to hide it. He must have known it was futile. The evidence against him was overwhelming. No defense lawyer in the world could get him out of his bind. He would never get to return home to his wife. He would never get to raise his two daughters. He would never be free again.

Marguerite Oswald took the phone from Marina. She wanted to speak to her son. "Honey, your face!", she exclaimed. "You're so bruised up! What are they doing!?"

"Mother, don't worry", Lee sighed. "I just got in a scuffle".

"Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"No, Mother, everything is fine. I know my rights. I have already requested to get in touch with an attorney, Mr. Abt. Don't worry about a thing."

Marguerite handed the phone back to Marina. "You have friends. They'll help you", Lee told Marina. "If it comes to that, you can ask the Red Cross for help. You mustn't worry about me. Kiss Junie and Rachel for me".

"I will", Marina replied as she began to weep. "Alka, remember that I love you."

"I love you very much", Oswald replied. "Make sure you buy shoes for Junie".

Lee set the phone down and was led away. Marina burst out crying. Right then and there, she knew once and for all that her husband was guilty. Had he been innocent, he would have undoubtedly, in her mind, been railing about being persecuted and denied his rights. But now, his calm demeanor reminded her too much of his attempt on General Walker's life. Marina knew that there was only one reason why he wouldn't tell her he didn't kill the president - he was guilty.

Marina, holding her infant child June, and Oswald's mother Marguerite stand inside Dallas Police headquarters as they wait to talk to Lee.

About an hour later, Robert Oswald - who had not seen Lee in over a year - entered the visiting room to speak to his brother. Both spoke over the phone to each other.

"This is taped", Lee warned Robert. "How are you?"

"I'm fine", Robert replied. He saw the bruises on his brother's face. "What happened? Have they been roughing you up?"

"No, I got this at the theater", Oswald answered. "They haven't bothered me since. They're treating me all right."

"Lee, what the Sam Hill is going on here?"

Lee gave a meek reply. "I don't know."

"You don't know!?", Robert exclaimed. "Look, they got your pistol, your rifle, they've got you charged with shooting the president and a police officer. And you tell me you don't know!?"

Lee doubled down. "Don't believe all this so-called evidence".

Robert stared into his brother's eyes, perhaps searching for some sign of guilt. Lee sensed it.

"Brother, you won't find anything there". He changed the topic. "Junie needs a new pair of shoes". Robert offered to buy them, then he offered to get his brother an attorney.

"No, you stay out of it", Lee replied. "I'm not going to have anyone from down here. I want this one."

"Well, all right", Robert conceded. "I'll see you in a day or two". He bade his brother farewell.

Neither Robert nor Marina would ever see Lee again.

-

Later in the evening, Captain Fritz was notified that police had found photos of Oswald in the Paine's garage - photos of him posing with a rifle and a pistol. They were the two backyard photographs that Marina had taken of Lee a few months earlier. Marina had even told police that she herself had taken the photos and provided them with the original film negative. The police instantly knew the evidentiary value these photos held. Oswald had repeatedly denied ever owning a rifle, but now - on top of the evidence connecting Oswald to the Hidell alias that had purchased the weapons - they had incontrovertible photographic proof that Oswald not only owned a rifle, but that he owned the very same rifle that had been recovered from the Depository and had been linked to the assassination.

Fritz decided to confront Oswald with this new evidence. He called Oswald back into his office.

"Lee", Fritz began, "you told me earlier that you'd never owned a gun".

"That's right", Oswald replied with a smirk. "I never owned a gun."

"Okay", Fritz proceeded. "I want to show you something". The captain reached into an envelope and held out a print of the backyard photograph, prominently showing Oswald posing with his rifle, pistol, and socialist newspapers. "How do you explain this?", he asked.

In an instant, Oswald's smirk evaporated. He went pale and began to fidget, biting his lip.

"I'm not going to make any comment about that", he told Fritz.

"Well", Fritz continued, "is that your face in the picture?"

Oswald stalled as he tried to come up with an excuse. "I won't even admit that".

"That's not your face?", Fritz asked.

"No, that's not even my face", Oswald replied, before quickly changing his story yet again. "That's a fake. I've been photographed dozens of times. Someone has taken my picture and put my face on a different body."

Fritz jumped on that. "So that is your face"

Oswald changed his story again. "Yes, that's my face, but that's not my body. I know all about photography. Someone has photographed me and then superimposed a rifle in my hand and a gun in my pocket."

Fritz put the photograph on the desk. "We found this in your possessions, Lee", he said.

"That picture has never been in my possession", Oswald lamely denied. "I have nothing more to say about that."

November 24

Like the day before, Sunday, November 24, dawned on a bleak day in America. Both the funerals of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit were to occur that day, each of them broadcast live on television and attended by thousands of mourners.

In Dallas, the city remained on edge. The previous night, authorities had informed the press that they intended to transfer Oswald from police headquarters to the Dallas County Jail a few miles away. The station had received a flood of threatening phone calls, including one from an anonymous caller claiming to represent "a committee that is neither left nor right wing" and promising that "tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, we will kill the man who killed the president".

Owing to the threats, police intended to transfer Oswald to the county jail in an armored car, but they would allow reporters into the basement garage to film Oswald being led to the armored transport. Before the day was over, this would prove to be a critical mistake.

Prior to being moved, Oswald was subjected to one more interrogation in Captain Fritz's office. Fritz knew the backyard photographs of Oswald with his rifle and pistol were authentic, but he hadn't yet narrowed down where they had been taken. He tried to coax Oswald into revealing the location.

"Lee, why don't you just tell us where the pictures were taken? You know, you'll save us a lot of time if you just tell us. We'll find out the location sooner or later".

Oswald remained defiant. "I don't have anything to say about it", he snapped.

Fritz tried once again to elicit a confession. "Did you shoot the President?"

"No", Oswald answered.

"Do you have any knowledge of the shooting? What about the shooting of Officer Tippit?"

Oswald shook his head. "Look, I don't know why you're asking me these questions. The only reason I'm here is because I popped a policeman in the nose at the theater on Jefferson Avenue. Okay, I admit it. But the reason I hit him was because I was protecting myself. As far as the rest of it, I emphatically deny having anything to do with shooting an officer or killing the president."

It was yet another lie. Of course, Oswald knew very well why he was under arrest, and he had already been charged with both murders by this point. His attempts to play dumb did not impress Captain Fritz.

Another investigator, Postal Inspector Holmes, joined the questioning. "Did you have a post office box here in Dallas?", he asked.

"Yeah", answered Oswald. "Box 2915".

Oswald had just admitted that he owned the same post office box where the Carcano rifle and pistol were shipped.

"Did you rent it under your name?"

"Yes"

Once again, Oswald implicated himself. He had not rented the box under his name. On the application form, he had listed the owners as "Marina Oswald" and "A.J. Hidell".

"Did you ever have a rifle shipped there?", asked Holmes.

Oswald erupted. "No! I did not order any rifle!"

Fritz held up the backyard photograph. "What about this?"

Oswald once again played dumb. "I don't know what you're talking about".

Holmes jumped on the post office box discrepancy. "Your application shows the name A.J. Hidell as another person entitled to receive mail in the box".

Oswald shrugged. "I don't recall anything about that"

"Well, isn't it a fact that when you were arrested you had an identification card with the name Hidell on it?"

"Yes, that's right", Oswald conceded.

"How do you explain that?"

"I don't explain it", Oswald replied lamely. "Nobody got mail out of that box but me".

Fritz turned the conversation to Oswald's other post office box, 6225. Oswald said he rented the box to receive literature from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

"Did you contact them?", Fritz asked.

"Yes," replied Oswald, "and they sent me some Communist literature and a letter signed by Alex Hidell".

Once again, Oswald was changing his story. First, he had identified himself as Hidell. Next, he had claimed that Hidell was an alias he had "picked up in New Orleans". Then, he said that he had never heard of Hidell. And now - after all that - he was claiming that Hidell had sent letters to his mailbox.

Fritz once again asked Oswald where he was at the time of the shooting. Oswald again changed his story.

"When lunchtime came, one of the Negro employees invited me to eat lunch with him, and I said 'You go on down and send the elevator back up and I will join you in a few minutes'. Afterwards, I went downstairs to get a Coke and see what all the fuss was about, but before I could get out, a police officer stopped me."

This time, once again, Oswald contradicted his own story - even more significantly this time. When he had first been arrested, Oswald had told Captain Fritz that he was on the first floor eating lunch when President Kennedy was shot and went up to the second floor to get a Coke. But now, when asked a second time where he was, he recounted that he had told his coworker to send the elevator back up, and that he went downstairs to get a Coke. Through these two major slip-ups, Oswald had just admitted that he had been elsewhere, on one of the upper floors of the depository, when Kennedy had been shot.

Fritz, for his part, didn't seem to notice the contradiction at first. He continued to ask questions about Hidell. "If you don't know anyone by the name Hidell, why would you have that name on this card?"

"I never used the name of Hidell", Oswald lied.

"Lee, do you know anyone by the name of A.J. Hidell?"

"No, I never used the name, and I don't know anyone by that name".

Now, yet again, Oswald had changed his story about the name Hidell. Only minutes earlier, he had claimed to police that "Alex Hidell" had sent him Communist literature in the mail. But now, once again, Oswald was claiming that he had never heard of Hidell. Even though he hadn't confessed to killing Kennedy or Tippit, Oswald's own denials and excuses were screaming his guilt louder than any confession could.

"What about the draft card we got out of your wallet showing the name A.J. Hidell?"

Oswald exploded. "I've told you all I'm going to about that card! You took notes! You read them for yourself! You know as much about it as I do."

Fritz ended the interrogation there, at around 11 AM. It was time for Oswald to be transferred.

Dallas detective Jim Leavelle, clad in a tan suit, entered. He was to escort Oswald through the garage to the waiting armored car outside. He helped Oswald put on a black sweater and then handcuffed himself to the prisoner. Fritz went ahead of the pair as they took the elevator down to the garage.

A crowd of reporters and cameramen were already in the garage, broadcasting a live feed of the hall as Dallas police prepared to walk their prisoner past the cameras. Outside, a crowd of Dallas citizens had gathered to watch the car go by and jeer Oswald as he passed.

As they rode the elevator, Leavelle - whose left wrist was linked to Oswald's right arm by his handcuffs, made an oblique joke to the prisoner. "Lee, if anybody takes a shot at you, I just hope they're as good a shot as you are", he chuckled.

Lee snickered. "Aw, you're being melodramatic", he laughed. "Nobody's gonna be shooting at me."

As the elevator door opened, reporters shoved microphones into Oswald's face. "I'd like to contact a member, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union", Oswald told the reporters before other officers pushed them aside.

Those were to be the last words that Oswald would ever speak.

"You Killed the President, You Rat!"

Captain Fritz was first out, walking calmly past the waiting crowd of reporters. A few seconds later, Oswald, flanked by Leavelle to his right and Detective L.C. Graves to his left, emerged from the doorway into the hall, with a smirk on his face. Cameras began to flash as reporters took pictures of the suspect as he was led down the hall.

The time was 11:21 AM. Live TV cameras would capture what happened next - perhaps one of the most infamous moments in television history. As Oswald was walked down the hall, a man in a dark suit and gray hat emerged from the crowd of reporters on Oswald's left. An officer recognized the man. "Jack, you son-of-a-bitch, don't!", he yelled.

Oswald, a smirk on his face, is escorted by police to a waiting armored car to bring him to Dallas City Jail, oblivious to the fact he is a split-second away from death.

The man stepped in front of L.C. Graves with his right arm extended. His right hand clutched a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver, with his middle finger on the trigger. In an instant, the man shoved the gun against Oswald's torso and fired a shot.

BANG!

This infamous photograph taken by Bob Jackson shows the exact moment Lee Harvey Oswald is shot by Jack Ruby. Captain Will Fritz, wearing glasses and a Stetson hat, can be seen to the left. 

Oswald let out a dull yell of pain as he fell to the floor, clutching his stomach. He pulled Detective Leavelle down with him. Immediately, the shooter was enveloped by officers and tackled to the ground.

"You killed the president, you rat!", screamed the man. He lunged forward to fire again.

Pandemonium ensued in the garage. Reporters dropped to the ground and ducked as policemen drew their guns and jumped onto the pile of officers subduing the shooter.

Lieutenant Graves pried the revolver from the man's hand as he pinned him to the floor and handcuffed him. The man was still yelling. "I hope I killed the son-of-a-bitch!", he shouted. "I'm happy I got him! It'll save everyone a lot of trouble!"

"Who the hell is this son-of-a-bitch!?", yelled one detective, incredulous.

The man smiled amiably. "Aw hell, you guys know me! I'm Jack Ruby!"

The .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver used by Jack Ruby to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.

Detective Leavelle unlocked the handcuffs linking him to Oswald and jumped in to assist the officers securing Ruby. Detective Billy Combest stood over Oswald and pulled up his sweater. The situation was not looking good. Oswald was still alive, but Combest could see a gaping gunshot wound in his abdomen. He was losing blood fast and was incoherent, moaning and mumbling.

Detective Combest bent over Oswald. "Is there anything you want to tell me?", he yelled over the noisy pandemonium. He could tell that Oswald was dying. Maybe now, he would finally crack and confess to the murder of President Kennedy, before he died.

"Is there anything you want to say right now before it's too late? Do you have anything to tell us now?"

Oswald looked Combest in the eyes. He began to open his mouth, but said nothing and slowly shook his head as his consciousness began to fade. After a few seconds, Oswald closed his eyes and stopped moving. He would never wake up again.

The entire shooting was broadcast on live television, and millions of Americans saw the murderer of their president get gunned down in broad daylight. 

When the crowd outside heard the news that Lee Oswald had been shot, they cheered and applauded. To them, it was poetic, Texas justice.

-

At 11:25, four minutes after the shooting, cameras captured Oswald's limp, unconscious body being loaded by stretcher into an ambulance. Oswald was unresponsive. His face was a deathly pale color, and he was struggling to breathe. The detectives got into the ambulance with him and placed an oxygen mask on his face.

A dying Lee Harvey Oswald is loaded onto a stretcher to be rushed to Parkland Hospital - the same hospital where President Kennedy died.

The ambulance rushed Oswald to Parkland Hospital - the very same hospital where President Kennedy had been declared dead two days earlier. Some of the same doctors who had worked on President Kennedy now worked to save the life of his killer.

Oswald was barely alive by the time he arrived at the hospital. He began to tug on the oxygen mask on his face, though he didn't appear to be conscious. Though Oswald had been shot only once, Ruby had fired at an angle that allowed the bullet to travel sideways across Oswald's body, wreaking havoc on his internal organs before hitting his rib and lodging. He was bleeding internally and was in extremely critical condition.

Out of respect for President Kennedy, the doctors chose not to treat Oswald in Trauma Room One. Instead, they brought Oswald to Trauma Room Two across the hall, where Governor Connally had been treated two days earlier. The doctors cut off Oswald's clothes and prepared him for surgery.

The surgeons quickly discovered that Ruby's bullet had severed Oswald's aorta. They clamped it shut to stop the bleeding, but most could see it was already too late. Oswald had lost too much blood before arriving at the hospital, and he was losing more blood than the doctors could infuse. Oswald's pulse rate plummeted. His organs began to fail. As a final measure to try and save Oswald's life, the doctors hooked him up to a defibrillator and applied a series of electroshocks, hoping to stimulate a heartbeat. But it was no use. The wound was fatal.

At 1:07 PM on November 24th, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald died in Trauma Room Two, only a few feet away from where his first victim had expired almost exactly two days earlier. Any hope of a satisfactory resolution to the case he had set in motion died with him.

Lee Harvey Oswald lies dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital, with the fatal bullet wound visible in his abdomen.

What If?

The death of Lee Harvey Oswald was, at first, enthralling news to a nation that had been reeling with grief over the murder of their beloved president. Jack Ruby himself knew it. The same day he killed Oswald, Ruby was visited in jail by a close friend. Ruby couldn't contain his glee and openly boasted about what he had done. "I got balls, don't I, baby?", Ruby crowed to his friend. The friend replied "Yeah, Jack, and they're gonna hang you by 'em!"

Even as Jack Ruby sat in jail, charged with murder for killing Oswald, thousands of telegrams were sent his way by admirers who were overjoyed that he had exacted Texas-style vigilante justice against the most hated man in America.

"Well done soldier. Mission accomplished", read one telegram addressed to Ruby.

"God bless you for your heroic deed", wrote another. "You have vindicated the people of the great city of Dallas and the nation."

"You did what millions of others wanted to do", read a third. "If I can help you in any way, let me know. God help you."

Jack Ruby's official police mugshots, taken the same day he murdered Lee Harvey Oswald. Though many Americans initially considered him a hero for striking down the murderer of President Kennedy, Ruby would be convicted of murder with malice and sentenced to death in the electric chair in 1964. He died of cancer in 1967 while appealing that sentence.

Ruby's support would prove of little help. He would later be convicted of murder with malice for killing Oswald and was sentenced to death on March 14, 1964. In 1966, Ruby's conviction would be overturned on appeal, but before he could be retried, Ruby would die in prison from cancer on January 3, 1967. 

To the day he died, Ruby probably felt no remorse at what he had done. To the end, he even considered himself to be a hero who had done a virtuous service for his country, striking down a man the entire world hated.

But Ruby, by killing Oswald, condemned the entire Kennedy assassination into the realm of uncertainty. It is because of him that, even today, the Kennedy assassination remains, in the mind of the public, an open and unsolved case - despite the fact that, when the evidence is presented and viewed in its entirety, it is anything but.

Within only the first two days, the evidence against Oswald was already beyond overwhelming. He had repeatedly implicated himself time and time again throughout his series of interrogations, telling one provable lie after another. He changed his story, lying about everything from where he went to who he was. Police had discovered the backyard photographs of him posing with his rifle - the very rifle he had denied ever owning - and photos that Marina herself gave to authorities and admitted taking. Oswald had been identified by six different eyewitnesses in twelve different photo lineups as the man in the window of the sixth floor of the Depository. He had been arrested carrying a pistol registered to an "A. J. Hidell" - a name he also had on a card he was arrested carrying, and the very same name that had been used on the order form to purchase his rifle. He had admitted to owning the very same P.O. Box which had received both the rifle and the pistol implicated in the murders.

And all of this was discovered in only the first two days. More evidence against Oswald would surface even after his death. The rifle found in the Depository had tufts of fiber caught in the metal buttplate. Forensic examiners from the FBI would later positively match those fibers to a sweater found in Oswald's apartment. The rifle would be dusted for fingerprints, and not only were Oswald's prints found all over the gun, but they would be found in places that could only be touched when the gun was disassembled. The two bullets that hit Kennedy and Connolly would be recovered, and when compared to test bullets fired from Oswald's rifle, examiners would determine that they had been fired from Oswald's rifle to the exclusion of all other rifles. 

The 6.5mm bullet that was fired at General Walker - a crime that Marina herself told police about after the assassination - would be recovered and examined. Though a visual comparison was inconclusive - owing to the great damage the bullet had endured - neutron activation analysis showed the Walker bullet came from the same batch of ammunition as the rounds fired at Kennedy and Connolly. And the three shell casings in the depository, too, were positively linked to Oswald's rifle. The firing pin on the Carcano was slightly misaligned, making each shell casing fired from the gun unique. All three shell casings had the same identical firing pin marks as test rounds fired from Oswald's Carcano.

Similarly, the snubnosed .38 Smith & Wesson "Victory" revolver Oswald was carrying when he was arrested would be linked positively to the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit. Though the barrel - being slightly oversized for the gun - made ballistic testing of the bullets inconclusive, the shell casings from the revolver - four of five of which were found - all had hammer marks on their primers that were positively identified as coming from the hammer of Oswald's revolver. 

So great was the amount of evidence against Oswald that it is practically unrivaled in its totality. Indeed, even today it would be more difficult to find any other defendant with as much evidence against him - both physical and circumstantial - as there was against Lee Harvey Oswald.

Undoubtedly, had Lee Oswald lived, all of this evidence would have been presented in court for the entire world to see. A grand jury undoubtedly would have indicted Oswald on charges of murder with malice for both the murder of President John F. Kennedy and the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit. Oswald would have likely gone to trial in early January of 1964, first for the murder of President Kennedy. Henry Wade did not plan to bring Oswald to trial for the murder of Officer Tippit unless Oswald avoided the death penalty for Kennedy's murder.

The trial of Lee Harvey Oswald would have undoubtedly been an international sensation. The assassination of President Kennedy occurred in the age of television and mass media, and such a high-profile case would have presented a trial unparalleled in its importance in all of American history. The entire world would have seen extensive, in-depth media coverage of the proceedings against Oswald. All the evidence that overwhelmingly implicated Oswald in the crime of the century would have been laid out in full before a jury. All of the evidence would have been thoroughly examined, scrutinized, and publicized on the world stage. And any and all doubt that Oswald had killed Kennedy - doubt that continues to plague a vast majority of Americans today - would have been thoroughly and completely dispelled.

Dallas would have been home to the most famous trial in American history - the trial of the century if there ever was to be one. Henry Wade - who planned to personally present the case against Oswald - would have gone down in US history as the nation's most famous prosecutor. The jury would have been given the privilege to see the overwhelming, unparalleled, incontrovertible mountain of evidence implicating Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of President Kennedy. John Abt, whom Oswald wanted to be his defense lawyer, was a skilled attorney who had defended many other radical leftists in court - most notably accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss - but Abt would have had no way to overcome the devastating volume of evidence against his client. No defense lawyer in the world could have won an acquittal for Oswald.

There is no question as to what the verdict would have been. The evidence allowed for only one conclusion. The world would have watched on live television the conclusion of the sensational trial, broadcasting the inevitable verdict the jury would have reached: "We the jury find the defendant Lee Harvey Oswald guilty of murder with malice as charged in the indictment and assess his punishment at death".

After the verdict, Oswald would have been sent to death row, where he would have waited at most a year or so before, inevitably, with his appeals in all certainty being denied, he would have been strapped to the wooden electric chair at the state prison in Huntsville and, with the press of a button, made to suffer the same fate as 361 other condemned inmates in the state of Texas between 1924 and 1964.

Maybe the assassin would have even taken his final moments before his execution to finally confess his guilt and tell the world that he, Lee Harvey Oswald, had finally done something notable in his short life, and had earned the infamy he had always so longingly desired.

And with Oswald's inevitable execution, the nation could - once and for all - find a sense of justice, peace, finality, and closure in the aftermath of one of the darkest moments in its history.

There is absolutely no question that, had Lee Harvey Oswald made it to trial, he would have been found guilty and sentenced to death in Texas' electric chair, probably being executed in late 1964 or early 1965. Such a verdict would have undoubtedly dispelled any conspiracy theories about the assassination and settled any and all doubts as to Oswald's guilt, but it was not to be so.

But Jack Ruby ensured that all of this would never happen. By killing Oswald, he deprived the world of the chance to see the case against him be presented. There would be no trial. There would be no closure. There would be no justice. There would never be a satisfactory resolution to the murder of President Kennedy. No jury would ever get the chance to hand down a guilty verdict to Oswald. No prosecutor would ever be able to convince a jury - and the entire nation - that Lee Harvey Oswald - a pauper with no purpose and no future - had, in an instant, struck down the most beloved and powerful person in the entire world. 

Indeed, with Oswald dead before his trial, the tragedy of the murder of President John F. Kennedy remains - in the collective conscience of tens of millions of Americans - as unresolved and as raw as ever. Jack Ruby created a vacuum in the place of a resolution. The truth would never get the chance to be presented in its full and unvarnished picture. Even though the Warren Commission would conclude, in 1964, that Oswald had committed the assassination of President Kennedy and had acted alone, the findings are still unaccepted by the majority of Americans.

Today, it is impossible to discuss the assassination without falling into the realm of conspiracism. Within days of Oswald's death, wild speculation already started to abound, and by 1979 these conspiracy theories would see validation when the House Select Committee on Assassinations would conclude that, while Oswald had indeed shot President Kennedy, he had additional accomplices. Relying on faulty acoustic data that has since been discredited by the FBI and various acoustic experts, the House Committee concluded that a fourth shot had been fired at the Presidential Limousine from the Grassy Knoll. 

What the Committee did not reveal, however, was that this supposed "fourth shot" audible in the recording occurred approximately one minute after President Kennedy had been hit, with the Presidential Limousine long gone from Dealey Plaza by then.

But the facts didn't matter. The conspiracy theorists had the validation that they wanted. Wild theories continue to be peddled even to this day. 

The conspiracy theorists' list of suspects in the assassination is endless. They have accused the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, the Israeli Mossad, the Mob, the Mafia, Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cubans, South Vietnam, the "military-industrial complex", the Rothschilds, the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, wealthy banking executives, the KGB, the Dallas Police Department, the Irish Republican Army, the British Royal Family, the Freemasons, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Hoffa, right-wing extremists, Marilyn Monroe's family, Texas oil magnates, extraterrestrial aliens (yes, really!), the driver of the Presidential Limousine, a random agent with an AR-15 rifle in one of the trailing cars, Jackie Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Kennedy, and even Officer J.D. Tippit of being behind or otherwise involved in the assassination.

These theorists either claim that Oswald was completely innocent of the crime or - when they are willing to acknowledge his obvious guilt - argue that Oswald was a "patsy" who was hired to kill the President and then set up to take the fall, silenced by whatever grand conspiracy enlisted him.

These conspiracy theorists have, through their endless books, films, lectures, and internet videos, offered tens of thousands of hours of conjecture, speculation, supposition, assertion, and fallacious arguments to back up their accusations. They have excruciatingly scrutinized each and every single part of the "official story", searching for some inconsistency, some discrepancy, some minor error or inconsequential flaw that - in their minds - would blow the top off of some massive, sinister conspiracy they feel had to be involved in the killing of President Kennedy. But for almost 60 years, they have not offered up one single, solitary shred of credible evidence to back up any one of their endless unfounded assertions.

A group of protesters hold conspiratorial signs at a protest in Dealey plaza on the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.
Even today - despite the OVERWHELMING evidence pointing to Oswald's guilt - some 60-70% of Americans believe that President Kennedy was murdered at the hands of a conspiracy. It is a scathing indictment of how outrageous the discourse around the assassination has become.

Even when conspiracy theorists are willing to concede that Oswald did shoot the president, they still insist that he acted on behalf of some elaborate, sinister group of conspirators, and that he was "silenced" by Jack Ruby - who they also insist was part of the conspiracy - to stop him from implicating his "handlers".

But even this theory falls flat on its face when it is given even a moment's worth of thought. Oswald was notoriously unreliable and unstable - hardly someone to entrust with carrying out the most infamous crime in American history - and not one shred of credible evidence has emerged in the nearly six decades since the assassination that ties him to any of the countless groups the conspiracy theorists accuse of killing the president. And if Ruby killed Oswald to "silence" him, then why, perchance, was Ruby himself never silenced?

Indeed, Jack Ruby was apprehended immediately and lived over three more years after the assassination - long enough to be convicted and sentenced to death for killing Oswald - and not once during his confinement did anyone attempt to "silence" him from implicating any of his supposed conspirators. 

In fact, Ruby made his own motivations for shooting Oswald abundantly clear in multiple interviews during his confinement. He thought he had done the people of the United States a favor by killing the most despised man in America. He thought he had spared Jackie Kennedy the anguish of having to return to Dallas to face her husband's murderer at trial.

Ruby thought he was a national hero, and like Oswald he relished in his newfound fame. He even attempted to hire an agent, believing he would soon be a celebrity and would even have a movie made about his life. Clearly, Ruby was hardly someone any conspirator would ever trust to take part in such a high-stakes, diabolical plot where absolute secrecy would be paramount.

To this day, no other weapon besides Oswald's Carcano M1891/38 has ever been linked to the assassination. To this day, no other bullets or shell casings aside from the ones fired from Oswald's Carcano have been found or linked to the assassination. No credible evidence has ever emerged implicating anyone - individual or group - other than Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of President John F. Kennedy. These conspiracy theorists search for meaning where there is none. They search for guilt where it isn't present. To them, the fact that a nobody like Oswald could strike down the most powerful and influential person in the world seems unfathomable. They feel there has to be more. They feel there must be some meaning, some tangible explanation for such a consequential event in history.

But the truth is that there is nothing more. Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to go down in history, and go down in history he did. Whatever his motivations or reasons for the assassination were, we will never know. Perhaps even Oswald himself couldn't explain why he did what he did. And that is the cold, hard truth of this tragic case. More than anything, it revealed how even the most powerful and venerated figures in society are, in the end, human beings who are no more fundamentally special than anyone else.

I said at the outset that I don't intend for this piece to surpass or even rival what has already been written on the Kennedy assassination. The murder of President Kennedy is one of the most written-about cases in world history. But if I could contribute one and only one idea to the discourse surrounding the Kennedy assassination, it is this: A king may seem untouchable - invincible even - to a commoner, but when it comes down to it, the greatest king is no more a human being - with the same flaws, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and capabilities - than the lowliest peasant.

-

This article is dedicated to the late Vincent Bugliosi, the famed Los Angeles prosecutor whose 1600-page book on the Kennedy assassination, "Reclaiming History", systematically debunks the cavalcade of baseless conspiracy theories surrounding the crime of the century and definitively reaffirms for the world the truth of Oswald's sole guilt in the assassination. Bugliosi was a fierce warrior for justice and truth and remains one of my personal heroes.