by Tucker Koch, Contributing Writer
John F. Kennedy is the second most famous president to be assassinated, only behind Abraham Lincoln. The general population has gathered all the information it knows about JFK by harassing shoppers at the local Walmart and checking online. So, let’s get into it: How did the assassination happen?
First, let’s provide background on JFK and the killer. We’ll start with JFK. The second-youngest president in United States history (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat him by about 1 year), he was a very outgoing man. Ironically, he and Roosevelt have some of the best recorded speeches in US history (Lincoln would’ve been on the list, but we only have his scripts). Finally, some people have both the ability to deliver a good speech and aren’t political extremists. Due to this outgoing nature, he was heavily involved with world affairs, including the following: The failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the failed Operation Mongoose, and dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis because of these failures; the Vietnam War; he supported the Irish parliament; was a strong advocate for anti-colonialism; established the Alliance of Progress; established the Peace Corps; he did a speech in West Berlin; he negotiated with the Soviets to partially prohibit nukes; and established a military alliance with Israel, just to name a few things. Most of these topics are articles in and of themselves, but the point I’m trying to make is that he did a lot of external affairs work. Thus, certain people weren’t pleased with these political actions and wanted him dead because of it.
Now, let’s move onto the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. Born in 1939, he had already had quite a chaotic life. He got thrown into juvenile detention (basically, diet jail for kids) at age twelve and frequently kept dropping out of school until he decided to join the US Marines in 1956. During his time in the Marines, he was court-martialed for bringing in an unauthorized handgun. They only found out about this because he accidentally shot himself in the arm with it. As you can tell by this point, this man isn’t very bright. He also learned Russian during his time in the Marines, which will become relevant here in a second.
In September of 1959, Lee was given a hardship discharge from the Marines to go look after his mother. He spent a grand total of 2 days with his mother before flying from country to country, eventually ending up in Moscow in October. Lee wished to become a Soviet citizen. The Soviet officials he spoke with were… confused, to say the least. The US and the Soviets have been enemies for about two to three decades now. Why is this random American trying to switch sides? Lee was refused citizenship and reportedly cut his wrist in the bathroom because he was so distraught. He even wrote about wanting to end his own life because he couldn’t be a Soviet citizen. I have been told not to joke here, as this topic has gotten serious rather fast. Due to these injuries and clear signs of his mental state being… unwell, let’s say, he was allowed to stay in a Soviet hospital for a couple more days until he got better. At this time, he harassed more Soviet officials to give him citizenship and even renounced his US citizenship at the US embassy in Moscow. Reluctantly, the Soviets did eventually give him citizenship.
Due to the planned nature of communist economics, he was assigned to work at a lathe in Minsk (modern-day Belarus). He was taught proper Russian and was constantly under surveillance during this time. He was also in a failed relationship at that time with a girl named Ella German. In 1961, only two years after becoming a Soviet citizen, he desired to be an American citizen again. This man is really fickle. He wrote to the US embassy in Moscow and asked for his passport back, as the renunciation of his US citizenship was less official and more like a guy screaming his head off in the middle of the embassy. During this time, he met another girl, Marina Prusavoka, a 19-year-old pharmacology student, and married her in about 2 months. They even had a full-on kid while they were applying for citizenship. In June of 1962, they were allowed to move back to the US and settled in the Dallas region of Texas. In July of that same year, Lee secured a position in steel sheet production. Then, in October, he left that job to work as a photoprint trainee, and he was promptly fired in April the next year. Man, this guy can’t stay in one place for very long.
Taking the next logical step, he bought a rifle and shot a retired US major general named Edwin Walker on April 10 of 1963. Lee did this because he believed Edwin was spreading right-wing propaganda among his troops. Fun fact before we continue: Edwin Walker later got into serious trouble for strongly opposing racial integration at the University of Mississippi. He then moved to New Orleans and got a job as a machinery greaser for a coffee company in May, only to be fired for loitering the following July. Can this man hold a job for the rest of his life? He then spent the next couple of months passing out pro-Fidel Castro leaflets around New Orleans. I guess he’s still a communist.
In September, he boarded a bus hailing from Houston and rode it all the way to Mexico City. His plan was to take a boat from Mexico to Cuba. He claimed it was because he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union. Are you fricking kidding me? Dude, do you not remember the last time you were there? Why do you want to go back so soon? He was eventually denied access to visit the islands on the grounds that he would do more harm than good for the revolution. It is sad when even the extremists think you’re too crazy. In October, he moved back to Dallas and got yet another job, this time at a school book depository. He actually kept this job, though, and had a second kid in the process. With that all being said, we have finally arrived at the actual assassination.
So, on November 21st of 1963, JFK was taking part in a parade in Dallas. Everything was going well until about 12:30 that afternoon. Then, three gunshots rang out: one of them got JFK in the back, one nailed him in the back of the head, and the third one just existed, I guess, since no more bullet wounds were found. Somehow, despite the assassination happening in front of a good number of people, the origins of the bullets were still unknown. Most didn’t know where it came from; some thought it came from a nearby grassy knoll (we’ll get back to this malarkey), and some reported it came from the school book depository, the same place where Lee worked. Three witnesses even say they saw someone with a rifle peeking out from the 6th-floor window. The FBI walked up there and found Lee’s rifle (his fingerprints were all over the dang thing). He apparently discarded it before making his escape.
At 1:12 in the afternoon that same day, Lee was spotted walking down the road, and a local police officer pulled over and called him over for a quick chat. After a bit of chit-chat, the cop exited the vehicle and proceeded to get shot by Lee 3 times with a revolver. Lee shot him in the right temple for good measure and bolted out of there before he got caught. Around the same time, Lee’s boss reported him missing to the FBI. Lee eventually got caught at 1:36 in the afternoon while sneaking into a movie theater because he was tired of running. Dude, you just assassinated the president; now is not the time for movies!
A couple of days later, Lee was getting transferred from the city jail to the county jail. Due to how slow the US legal system is, he has not had a chance to receive the death penalty yet. Unfortunately for Lee, he didn’t have to wait for the legal system, as a local nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, shot and killed him before he could transfer jails. Ruby then got arrested and died of lung failure in 1967.
Now, with all the information we have about this assassination, you’d think people would agree on how it happened. Somehow, some people have made conspiracy theories about how they think JFK died. There are quite a few of these conspiracy theories out there, but I’m only going to be yapping about the more interesting ones, as this article is already long enough.
Some highlights from the list of conspiracies are that there is a secret 2nd government in the US made up of fascists and rich people that used Lee as a scapegoat; the CIA hired Lee to carry out the assassination for some reason; the Rockefeller family hired Lee to do it so they could get some land in Indonesia; the Jews did it because they detested JFK after he didn’t let Israel have nukes. (Can you conspiracy theorists not be racist for five seconds!), rumors that the KGB hired Lee to do it (despite the Soviets wanting nothing to do with him on multiple occasions), a bunch of anti-Castro Cuban exiles did it, the secret service did it, Fidel Castro authorized the shooting despite also wanting nothing to do with Lee, that George H.W. Bush did it because of course this was brought up in a presidential election several decades later, the vice president played a role in it somewhere (There are like 5 different conspiracy theories of this man’s involvement), and that the US mafia did it.
I think the average person who reads these articles would find it blatantly self-evident that these conspiracy theories are false. Anyways, this has been Tucker Koch, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this.
