Lee Harvey Oswald was a former US Marine, who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959. He lived in Minsk, Belarus, until June 1962, when he returned to the United States with Marina, his Russian wife, eventually settling in Dallas. He was 24 years old at the time of the Kennedy assassination. He was initially arrested for the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit, who was killed on a Dallas street approximately 45 minutes after President Kennedy was shot. Oswald was later charged with the murder of Kennedy, but he denied shooting anybody – describing himself as a patsy. He was shot two days after the assassination by Jack Ruby, in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
Jack Ruby was the 52–year–old owner of a nightclub (also described as a 'strip club') in the centre of Dallas. He originally claimed that he had shot Oswald in order to help the city of Dallas to "redeem" itself in the eyes of the public, and to spare "Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial." He later claimed that he'd been "framed" by people in "very high places." He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but on appeal he was granted a new trial. He died in prison in January 1967, from a pulmonary embolism caused by lung cancer, while waiting for a date for the retrial to be set.
There seems to be little doubt that Oswald was at least guilty of the murder of Police Officer Tippit; numerous witnesses attested to this fact. The officer was on the lookout for a suspect in the matter of the assassination, and Oswald was a fairly close match to the description that had been circulated. Officer Tippit pulled his car up alongside a suspect (believed to be Oswald), who walked over to the car and appeared to exchange words with Tippit through an open vent window. Tippit got out of the car, and as he walked towards the front of the car, the suspect drew a handgun and fired three shots in rapid succession, all three bullets hitting Tippit in the chest. He then walked up to Tippit's fallen body and fired a fourth shot directly into his right temple, fatally wounding him. Tippit was dead before any help could arrive. Oswald was later arrested after "acting suspiciously" by appearing nervous as police sirens neared him and by ducking into the Texas Theatre without buying a ticket.
The Warren Commission concluded in September 1964 that Oswald was guilty of both murders (Kennedy and Tippit), and that he had acted alone in assassinating Kennedy, by firing three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. Previous investigations, carried out by the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police Department, had reached the same conclusion. Nevertherless, and despite forensic, ballistic, and eyewitness evidence supporting the 'lone gunman' theory, public opinion polls taken over the years have shown that most Americans believe that Oswald did not act alone, but was part of a conspiracy. One persistent theory is that the assassination was ordered by the Mafia, and that Ruby was pressurised into shooting Oswald by the Mafia, with whom he was known to have been involved, in order to cover up their involvement.
© Haydn Thompson 2017