Lee Harvey Oswald

The man who killed Camelot, Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Oswald’s father died of a heart attack just two months before Oswald was born, leaving Oswald’s mother to care for three young children. Under this financial strain, Oswald and his siblings were placed in the New Orleans Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Orphanage for over a year. After Oswald’s mother remarried, she reunited with her children and they moved to Fort Worth, Texas. The stable home life was disrupted again when Oswald’s mother divorced his stepfather, and he spent the rest of his childhood on the road. Oswald suffered from dyslexia and did poorly in school, which he often skipped. In 1952, Oswald was sent by school officials to the New York City Youth House for truancy, where he was assessed as being withdrawn, socially maladjusted, not properly taken care of at home, and in need of psychiatric care.

At age seventeen, Oswald had still not passed the tenth grade, although he was finally old enough to join the Marines. He was assigned to the Second Training Battalion in San Diego for boot camp, and then to Camp Pendleton for advanced infantry combat training. With the military, Oswald received training in aircraft surveillance, aviation electronics, and radar. While in the military, Oswald was considered a loner by his peers and often challenged authority, which led to him being court-martialed twice. Oswald’s military career came to an end three months early, when he left on a hardship discharge to care for his mother.

Oswald had first become interested in Communism in the ninth grade, and taught himself the Russian language while serving in the military. After his time in the military, he applied to a liberal arts college in Switzerland so that he could travel abroad to Europe and eventually to Moscow. After landing in Russia, Oswald contacted the United States consul to renounce his United States citizenship. He then applied for Soviet citizenship; however, the Russian government distrusted him, and denied his application. Oswald remained in Russia without his citizenship, living in an apartment and working at the Belorussian Radio and Television Factory in Minsk. After a year of living in the Soviet Union, Oswald felt it did not live up to his Communist ideals, and contacted the United States consul again to move back to the United States. Also at this time, Oswald married nineteen-year-old pharmacology student, Marina Prusakova, and in 1962, the couple, along with their baby daughter, June Lee Oswald, moved back to the United States to settle in Fort Worth, Texas.

In Texas, Oswald worked odd jobs as a sheet-metal worker and a photo print trainee. On April 10, Oswald attempted to shoot retired General, Edwin A. Walker. Oswald missed his target and retreated to New Orleans with his family, undiscovered. In New Orleans, Oswald started the pro-Castro organization, New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In September 1963, he traveled to Mexico City and applied for both Cuban and Soviet citizenships, but was refused both. He then moved with his family back to Dallas, Texas.

In Texas for the second time, Oswald assumed the name O.H. Lee and began working at the Texas School Book Depository. On November 22, 1963, Oswald wrapped a rifle in paper and took it to work with him. That day, President John F Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, were scheduled to travel through Dallas in an open motorcade. As they passed the Texas School Book Depository at 12:30 p.m., shots fired out from the building’s sixth floor window, killing the president.

Less than an hour later, Oswald shot and killed a Dallas police officer who tried to question him near his house, and then fled to the Texas Theatre where he was confronted by police and charged with the murder of the officer. On November 23, Oswald was charged with the assassination of President Kennedy, which he denied during police interrogations. The following day, while being transferred from the police station to the county jail, Oswald was shot and killed by night club owner, Jack Ruby. Because of this, many questions remain to this day surrounding Oswald’s culpability in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it is widely-speculated that he was not alone in its orchestration. Many conspiracy theories abound that implicate the Mafia or the Soviet Union and relegate Oswald’s part in the overall plan as minor.

YUDDY