An Assassination Shrouded in Controversy
The assassination of John F. Kennedy has given rise to countless conspiracy theories over the years. Despite extensive investigations and research, no definitive answer has emerged as to whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Oswald was a former US Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, but returned to the US in 1962 after a few years of disillusionment. He struggled to keep a job and, in March 1963, attempted to assassinate a retired general with a rifle he purchased through mail order. He later secured a job at the Texas School Book Depository and, when JFK visited Dallas on November 22, 1963, Oswald set up a sniper nest in a sixth-floor window of the building and killed the president with three shots.
Oswald was later charged with killing Kennedy, but he denied it, claiming that he was a “patsy”. Two days later, he was shot and killed on live TV in the Dallas Police HQ by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner. Oswald’s murder before he could tell his story lent plausibility to the theory that the aim had been to silence him. Then Ruby died in jail of cancer a few years later. That supercharged the theory that those behind the assassination had neatly silenced Oswald: a dying man with nothing to lose did the deed in exchange for some unknown favor or to pay off a past debt.