Lee Harvey OswaldWithin hours of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, most Americans were familiar with the name Lee Harvey Oswald. Certain images of him – posing with a rifle, recoiling from Jack Ruby’s gun – have been ingrained in the nation’s memory. Yet to this day, he remains an enigma. Some of the questions and answers about him:
Q: Did Oswald kill Kennedy? Did he act alone?
A: The Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone, firing three shots from a window in his Dallas workplace, the Texas School Book Depository. Many Americans have questioned this conclusion. In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations ended its own inquiry by finding that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”
Q: What was Oswald’s childhood like?
A: Unstable. By the time he turned 17 and joined the Marines, he had lived at more than 20 different addresses and attended a dozen schools. He was born in New Orleans on Oct. 18, 1939, two months after his father died of a heart attack, spent time in an orphanage as a 3-year-old, and moved with his family to Dallas in 1944. He and his mother moved in 1952 to New York City, where he had run-ins with truant officers and underwent psychiatric observation. Two years later, they moved back to New Orleans.