IMAGE GALLERY

The Formative Years

Lee at two years of age. The following year, his mother, unable to cope with him, committed him to an orphanage, where he joined his two older brothers. (National Archives)

At fifteen, in New Orleans, after fleeing New York with his mother to avoid commitment to a youth center for troubled boys. The psychiatrist who examined Lee concluded he “had potential for explosive, aggressive, assaultive acting out.” (National Archives)

The Marines

A week after his seventeenth birthday, Lee followed his brother Robert into the Marine Corps, where he was court-martialed twice. (National Archives)

Oswald’s passport, issued on September 10, 1959, one day before his release from the Marines. Devoted to Marxism from the age of fifteen, he planned for nearly two years to defect to the Soviet Union. (National Archives)

Oswald in Russia

Oswald’s failed suicide attempt in Moscow prompted the Soviets to allow him to stay in Russia. In Minsk, he posed with Pavel Golovachev (right), a friend and later KGB informant on Oswald; Roza Kuznetsova (behind Oswald), an Intourist guide and also a KGB informant; and Ella Germann, Oswald’s first love, who devastated him by rejecting his marriage proposal. (National Archives)

Oswald kept a “Historical Diary” of his activities while in Russia, which showed not only his fickle nature but his deepening hatred of both the Soviet and American political systems. (National Archives)

Oswald (with dark glasses) and some of his co-workers at the Minsk radio and television plant. He grew to hate the menial work. (National Archives)

Marina and Lee

In March 1961, Oswald met Marina (far right), and they married a month later. With them are Marin’s aunt and uncle, Valentina Guryevna Prusakova and Ilya Vasilyevich Prusakov. Some mistakenly conclude that Ilya worked for the KGB, when he was actually the equivalent of a local U. S. policeman. (National Archives)

The Oswalds departing from Minsk for America. Although he tried at first to renounce his U.S. citizenship, Lee spent more than a year trying to obtain permission to return home. (National Archives)

Dallas: The Walker Shooting

Back in America, the Oswalds’ home life turned violent. Lee also created a second identity, complete with false identifications that he made. Alek was derived from his Russian nickname “Alik” and Hidell was a variation on the name of a Marine he had known. (National Archives)

In early 1963, Oswald stalked the Dallas home of right-wing general Edwin Walker, taking surveillance photos such as the one above. (National Archives)

The window of the Walker home, showing why Oswald’s assassination attempt went awry. His shot nicked the bottom of the wooden frame, deflecting the cullet’s path and saving Walker’s life. (National Archives)

Dallas: The Backyard Photos

This well-known photo of Oswald in the backyard of his Dallas apartment, with his pistol and rifle and holding two leftist newspapers, was one of several taken by his wife, Marina. “I thought I had gone crazy,” Marina later said about Lee’s request to be photographed in those poses. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in Oswald’s hand is the same one used to kill President Kennedy. (National Archives)

Despite Marina’s insistence that she took the photo, conspiracy critics have vigorously contested their authenticity. The House Select Committee on Assassinations finally settled the issue when twenty-two of the nation’s leading photo experts submitted the photograph to a series of sophisticated tests and concluded there was no evidence of fakery. Above is the grain structure analysis on one of the photos. Under a microscope, composite pictures are easily identified by variations in the grain pattern. (House Select Committee on Assassinations)

New Orleans

This unpublished photo of a smug Oswald was taken moments after his court hearing in New Orleans for having disturbed the peace in an altercation with anti-Castro Cubans. (Courtesy of Johann Rush)

In August 1963, Oswald passed out pro-Castro leaflets for the New Orleans branch of the Communist Fair Play for Cuba Organization. He was that chapter’s only member, though he hired two men from the unemployment line to help him distribute the pamphlets. Marina believed his obsession with Castro had become all-consuming. (Courtesy of Johann Rush)

Mexico City

Oswald’s application for a travel visa to Cuba, filled out at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City on September 27, 1963. He was furious when the Cuban consul rejected his request. The photo stapled at the upper left-hand corner was given personally by Oswald to the Cuba embassy clerk, belying conspiracy stories that an imposter visited instead. (House Select Committee on Assassinations)

Dealey Plaza: The Assassin’s View

These 1964 reconstructions, done by the FBI for the Warren Commission, approximate the shooter’s view through his 4X telescopic sight. These images, keyed by the Commission to frame numbers from the Zapruder film of the assassination, appear much smaller than what the assassin would have seen with the sight filling his entire line of vision. The car is a different model from the presidential limousine, and therefore the two agents are not in the actual positions of President and Governor Connally at the time of the assassination. Also, Oswald’s first shot was between frames 161 and 166, and his second shot was actually at frames 223–224. The third and final shot was at frame 313. (National Archives)

Dealey Plaza: The Shooting

Frame 225 of the Zapruder film shows the President just a fraction of a second after Oswald’s second shot hit him. JFK’s right arm has started moving up towards his chin, part of a neurological response to the throat wound. To the right of the President is a large open umbrella. Although it belonged to a heckler who was later identified, it gave rise to much early and incorrect conspiracy speculation. (National Archives)

Frame 313 of the Zapruder film captures the moment that Oswald’s fatal third bullet hit the President. It is the visual confirmation that the shot that killed JFK came from behind the motorcade, not from the Grassy Knoll. The metal-jacketed 6.5mm slug struck JFK in the high, right rear of his skull, and in this picture, brain tissue exits directly above and to the right of the President’s head. (National Archives)

Dealey Plaza: The Witnesses

Taken only seconds after the fatal third shot, this photo shows the sniper’s nest, with some of the boxes Oswald used to construct it. The tip of the box near the right side of the window served as a brace for the rifle. The men on the lower floor, Bonnie Ray Williams (left) and Harold Norman (right), were startled when they heard the rifle fire directly above them. Norman even heard Oswald operate the gun’s bolt action, and the three cartridge cases hitting the floor. (National Archives)

Howard Brennan, the construction worker who saw Oswald shooting during the assassination, here demonstrates where he was at that moment, only ninety-three feet from the sniper’s nest. (National Archives)

Officer Tippit and Oswald’s Arrest

Officer J. D. Tippit’s patrol car, in the exact location where he stopped Oswald just forty-five minutes after Kennedy was killed. As Tippit walked around the front of the car, Oswald pulled our his revolver and fired, killing Tippit instantly. (National Archives)

The Texas Theater, only blocks away from where Tippit was shot. Oswald, who was followed there by a local shoestore clerk, ducked inside the movie house without paying for a ticket. The theater’s ticket seller then called the police. (National Archives)

After a scuffle inside the theater, in which he unsuccessfully tried to shoot another policeman, Oswald was dragged out of the movie house by a Dallas policeman and a detective. (National Archives)

Jack Ruby

A television shot of the back of the room during Oswald’s press conference, held at the jail at midnight on the day of the assassination. Jack Ruby (second from right, in dark suit), a local Dallas nightclub owner, had entered the room by pretending to be a journalist. Ruby, publicity hungry and attracted to high-profile events, was obsessed with the weekend activities surrounding the assassination. (National Archives)

Oswald’s Murder

Since he was a nightclub owner with a tough guy image, his murder of Oswald later sparked considerable—and ultimately incorrect—speculation about whether he was a Mafia hit man. (National Archives)

Ruby in jail the day of his arrest. Although Ruby had not planned to shoot Oswald, once it happened he thought he would be treated as a hero for having meted out street justice to the President’s assassin. A lawyer who spoke to him during his first hours in jail, said, “He never expected to spend a night in jail.” (Dallas Municipal Archives)

JFK’s Casket Arrives in Washington

One of the most controversial conspiracy theories charges that this bronze coffin containing JFK (here being unloaded onto Air Force One in Dallas) was empty when it arrived at Andrews Air Force Base. Supposedly the President’s body had been stolen for surgical alterations while still in Dallas. The casket was never unattended, however, and it was hermetically sealed by an air-lock mechanism in Dallas. It was not reopened until its arrival for the autopsy at Bethesda. (National Archives)

The Aftermath

In 1978, six members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations traveled to Havana and met with Fidel Castro for four hours, the first time the Cuban president had answered questions about the assassination. Oswald, a committed leftist who wanted desperately to move to Cuba, might well have been inspired by Castro. (House Select Committee on Assassinations)

The Single Bullet Tested

A side and rear view of Warren Commission Exhibit 399, the single bullet that wounded Kennedy through his neck as well as inflicting all of Governor Connally’s injuries.

The bullet (also shown in side and rear views) from a 1992 reconstruction done by Failure Analysis Associates. In that test, the bullet’s charge was reduce so it would strike a cadaver’s wrist at 1100 feet per second, approximating the speed of CE 399 when it struck Governor Connally’s wrist. Emerging in even better condition than 399, it provided the final physical evidence necessary to prove the single bullet theory. (National Archives and Failure Analysis Associates)