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Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18th, 1939 - November 24th, 1963) was a former U.S. Marine (from October 1959 - June 1962) who assassinated John F. Kennedy.
Biography
Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939, to Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. (1896–1939) and Marguerite Frances Claverie (1907–1981). Robert Oswald was a distant cousin of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and served in the Marines during World War I. Robert died of a heart attack two months before Lee was born. Lee's elder brother Robert, Jr. (1934–2017) was also a former Marine. Through Marguerite's first marriage to Edward John Pic, Jr., Lee and Robert Jr. were the half-brothers of Air Force veteran John Edward Pic (1932–2000).
In 1944, Marguerite moved the family from New Orleans to Dallas, Texas. Oswald entered the first grade in 1945 and over the next half-dozen years attended several different schools in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas through the sixth grade.
Oswald enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on October 24, 1956, just after his seventeenth birthday. Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union just before he turned 20 in October 1959. According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials that same day, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States. Oswald replied by insisting that he wanted to live in the Soviet Union as a Soviet national. When pressed for identification papers, he provided his Marine Corps discharge papers. There, he studied communism and socialism and married a Russian woman.
Oswald was the one officially found guilty for the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, reportedly shooting the 35th U.S. President and killing a police officer named J.D. Tippit approximately 40 minutes later while fleeing. However, he denied involvement in both killings.
There have been many theories about the assassination, some more plausible than others, that he really might have been innocent, or at least didn't act alone in killing JFK. Either way, two days after he committed both murders, Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered by Jewish gangster-wannabe Jack Ruby in an act of vigilantism before he can be confirmed to be found guilty as his trial would be arranged.
If one goes by the assumption that he committed the killings alone, he presumably did it to make his mark on history.
In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone when he assassinated Kennedy by firing three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. This conclusion, though controversial, was supported by previous investigations from the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police Department.
Trivia
- Oswald killed JFK on the same day Robert Stroud died .
- He is portrayed by Gary Oldman in the Oliver Stone film JFK.