Lee Harvey Oswald

Assassin

Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. Oswald was a drifter with a murky past; he had been dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Marines and then defected to Russia in 1959, only to be refused citizenship there and sent back to the United States. Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy with a sniper's rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as the president's motorcade travelled through Dallas. Oswald was arrested hours later in a movie theater, after also shooting and killing police officer J.D. Tippet. Oswald was never tried: two days later he himself was shot to death at Dallas police headquarters by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. In 1964 a special commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren decided that Oswald, acting alone, had shot and killed the president.

Extra credit: Oswald's wife, Marina, was Russian... The gun Oswald used to shoot Kennedy was a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle... Oswald was captured in the Texas Theater, where the movie War Is Hell (starring Audie Murphy) was playing.

Oswald joins Meriwether Lewis and actor Yves Montand in our loop Exhumation Celebration... Other 20th-century assassins include Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray and Mark David Chapman.

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