November 22, 1963. It’s a date that basically lives in the collective DNA of America. Everyone knows the grainy footage of the Lincoln Continental winding through Dealey Plaza, the sudden chaos, and the frantic scramble of Secret Service agents. But when you strip away the Oliver Stone movies and the thick layers of "back and to the left" physics debates, you’re left with one name. Lee Harvey Oswald. He is officially the person who shot jfk, yet saying his name usually sparks a three-hour argument at any dinner table.
He wasn't some high-level super spy. Honestly, he was a bit of a mess.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a twenty-four-year-old former Marine who had already tried to defect to the Soviet Union and failed to find the "proletarian paradise" he thought existed there. By the time he was standing on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, he was a man who had been rejected by almost every system he’d ever tried to join. The Warren Commission—the official body tasked with investigating the assassination—spent months digging through his life, and what they found wasn't a mastermind. It was a lonely, frustrated individual with a $12.78 rifle.
The Sniper in the Window
The mechanics of the shooting are where things get messy for a lot of people. Oswald wasn't even supposed to be at work that day, or rather, it was just another Friday for him at the Book Depository. He’d hitched a ride with a coworker, Linnie Mae Randle’s brother, carrying a long brown paper package. He claimed it was "curtain rods."
It wasn't.
It was a 6.5mm Carcano Model 91/38 carbine. This wasn't a top-tier sniper rifle; it was a cheap, surplus Italian bolt-action weapon. Experts like those at the FBI and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) have spent decades recreating the shots. From that sixth-floor perch, looking down onto Elm Street, the person who shot jfk had a clear, albeit moving, target. Three shots were fired in roughly six to nine seconds.
One missed. One hit the President in the back and exited through his throat, also wounding Governor John Connally (the famous "Single Bullet Theory"). The final shot was the fatal one.
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While the "magic bullet" theory sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, forensic technicians and modern 3D mapping have shown that when you align the seats in the limousine—the Governor’s seat was actually lower and further inboard than the President’s—the trajectory is a straight line. It’s not magic. It’s just geometry. But for someone looking for a broader conspiracy, geometry feels too simple. Too cold.
Why the Person Who Shot JFK Remains a Mystery to Some
Even though the evidence against Oswald is a mountain—his palm print on the rifle, his presence at the window, the fact that he killed a police officer, J.D. Tippit, while trying to flee—people just can't quit the idea of a second shooter.
Why?
Because Lee Harvey Oswald is an unsatisfying villain. We want the President of the United States to have been taken down by a powerful cabal, the CIA, the Mob, or the Soviets. The idea that a disgruntled high school dropout with a cheap mail-order rifle could change the course of history is terrifying. It means the world is chaotic.
The HSCA in the late 1970s actually added fuel to this fire. They used acoustic evidence from a motorcycle policeman's stuck microphone to suggest there was a "high probability" of two shooters. Later, the National Academy of Sciences took a sledgehammer to that evidence, proving the "gunshots" on the tape were actually recorded about a minute after the assassination happened. Still, the seed was planted. Once you tell the American public there might have been someone on the Grassy Knoll, you can’t take it back.
The Strange Life of Lee Harvey Oswald
To understand the person who shot jfk, you have to look at his time in Minsk. Oswald was a "defector." He went to the USSR in 1959, thinking he’d be welcomed as a hero. Instead, the Soviets thought he was a bit unstable and probably a spy. They stuck him in a radio factory. He married Marina Prusakova, realized the Soviet Union was boring and grey, and crawled back to the U.S. with his wife and child in tow.
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He was a man who lived in the margins. He was an outspoken Marxist in the middle of Cold War Dallas. He handed out "Fair Play for Cuba" flyers in New Orleans. He even tried to assassinate a right-wing General named Edwin Walker just months before the JFK shooting. He missed that time, the bullet hitting a window frame.
Most people don't realize that Oswald was being watched by the FBI. They knew he was in town. They just didn't think he was a threat. That’s the real "conspiracy"—not a plot to kill the President, but a massive, embarrassing failure of intelligence.
The Texas Theatre and the End of the Road
Oswald didn't go down in a blaze of glory. After leaving the Depository, he went home, grabbed a revolver, and started walking. When Officer Tippit pulled him over because he matched the description of the suspect, Oswald shot him four times in broad daylight.
He then ducked into the Texas Theatre without paying for a ticket. That’s what actually got him caught—the shoe store manager next door, Johnny Brewer, noticed a guy looking "shifty" and slipping into the movies during a period of city-wide panic. The police swarmed the theatre, and after a brief scuffle where Oswald tried to fire his pistol again, they took him into custody.
Two days later, Jack Ruby shot him on live television.
That is the moment the JFK conspiracy was truly born. If Oswald had lived to stand trial, we might have had answers. We would have seen the evidence laid out in a court of law. Instead, Ruby—a nightclub owner with ties to both the police and the mob—silenced the only man who knew the truth. Ruby claimed he did it to spare Jackie Kennedy the pain of a trial. Most people think he was "closing a loop."
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The Evidence That Doesn't Go Away
If you’re looking for a smoking gun that points away from Oswald, you won't find it in the ballistics. The fragments found in the car matched Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons. The shells found by the window were fired from that specific bolt-action Carcano.
- The Backyard Photos: There are pictures of Oswald holding the rifle and the revolver, with Marxist newspapers in his hand. For years, critics said they were faked. Modern digital analysis of the shadows and the grain proves they are authentic.
- The Paper Bag: Investigators found a long paper bag with Oswald's fingerprint and a palm print near the sniper's nest.
- The Escape: The timeline of Oswald leaving the building, getting on a bus, then a cab, and finally reaching his rooming house was verified by multiple witnesses.
The complexity doesn't come from the "how," but the "why." Was he an asset? Was he a "patsy," as he yelled to reporters in the hallway of the Dallas Police Department? He certainly believed he was being set up, but his actions—killing Tippit, fleeing, lying about the rifle—suggest a man who knew exactly what he had done.
What We Can Learn From the Investigation
If you want to dive deeper into this, don't just watch YouTube videos. Read the actual reports. The Warren Report is massive, but it’s the primary source. Then, read the HSCA findings to see where they disagreed.
The most important thing to remember is that history is often messy. We like neat narratives where the bad guy has a clear motive and the good guys win. The story of the person who shot jfk is a story of a broken man who took advantage of a lapse in security to commit a horrific act. It wasn't a movie. It was a tragedy that happened in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of people.
Actionable Next Steps for History Buffs:
- Visit the Sixth Floor Museum: If you’re ever in Dallas, go there. Standing at that window (or as close as they let you get) changes your perspective on the "impossible" shots. They are actually quite close.
- Read "Reclaiming History" by Vincent Bugliosi: It’s a beast of a book—thousands of pages—but it systematically deconstructs every single conspiracy theory ever proposed.
- Examine the JFK Records Act files: Since the 1990s, the National Archives has released millions of pages of documents. You can search them online. You’ll find that while there are plenty of CIA secrets, none of them provide a different shooter.
- Study the ballistics: Look into the "Wound Ballistics" research performed by Dr. John Lattimer. He was the first civilian permitted to examine the Kennedy autopsy evidence and he successfully recreated the shots using the same type of rifle and ammunition.
Understanding the assassination isn't about finding a secret basement in a pizza parlor or a man with an umbrella. It’s about looking at the forensics, the geography of Dealey Plaza, and the troubled history of a man who wanted to be "somebody." Lee Harvey Oswald was that somebody, but for all the wrong reasons.