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Nation: The Man Who Killed Kennedy

14 minute read
TIME

Just two hours after the burial of President Kennedy, the body of Lee Harvey Oswald was put into a hastily dug grave in Fort Worth’s Rose Hill cemetery. The arrangements were made quietly by the Secret Service. The only mourners were Oswald’s 56-year-old mother Marguerite, his Russian-born wife Marina, 22, his two baby daughters and his brother Robert, 29, a Denton, Texas, brick salesman.

No pallbearers were to be found among friends, so seven newsmen were recruited for the job. Texas ministers, for all their talk about the shame of Dallas and the redemption of sin, seemed notably reluctant to preside. So the police chief telephoned the Rev. Louis A. Saunders, executive secretary of the Fort Worth Council of Churches, who left off watching Kennedy’s funeral on TV and went to the cemetery. “Someone,” he explained, “had to help this family.”

The plain pine coffin was opened. Marina Oswald placed two rings on her dead husband’s fingers and kissed him. The coffin was closed and lowered into a 6-ft.-deep vault, which weighed 2,700 lbs., was asphalt-lined and reinforced with steel bars. Said the funeral director: “It would be extremely hard for anyone to break into the grave.”

A Plot? Even as Oswald’s corpse was being unceremoniously disposed of, Government investigators were deep in one of the nation’s most intensive searches. First of all, they were looking for motivation: Was it rational, perhaps part of a plot, or simply the result of an aberrant mind? That answer they might never find. But they were also digging into the dark background of Lee Oswald, from birth right up to the day of his crime, and on that they found plenty.

One key discovery was turned up in New York City, where the Oswald family lived for a time. Lee Oswald was a poor student and a chronic truant in his early teens. A psychiatric report concluded that he had schizophrenic tendencies and was “potentially dangerous,” recommended that the boy be committed to an institution—but the city Family Court turned down the recommendation. Many of the other details of Oswald’s early life—his disgruntled Marine Corps years, his 33-month stay in Moscow during an unsuccessful attempt to get Soviet citizenship, his marriage there to Hospital Pharmacist Marina Prusakova—had become known within hours after his arrest (TIME, Nov. 29). He returned to the U.S. in June 1962, with his wife and four-month-old baby, and drifted among various odd jobs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There the Oswalds met several Russian immigrants, notably a sympathetic woman, Mrs. Ruth Paine, 31, who quickly befriended Marina.

The Commander. Oswald was driven by a storm of black compulsions. He forbade his wife to wear lipstick, insisted that they speak only Russian, refused to let her learn English—though she desperately wanted to learn the language and hoped to become an American citizen. A nonsmoker and teetotaler, he flew into rages when his wife lit a cigarette. He beat her on several occasions. They both fought furiously, often over tiny differences. Once, at the dinner table, he told her: “Get the catchup.” Marina replied: “Quit being a commander.” Snapped her husband: “I am the commander.”

Marina frequently spoke of leaving him and once went to stay at a friend’s house, where she complained that Oswald was cold toward her, that he would have sexual relations with her only about once every two months. “I felt sorry for him,” she told a friend in an effort to explain why she had married him. “Everybody hated him—even in Russia.”

Last April Oswald was out of a job and broke. Mrs. Paine took Marina to stay with her while Oswald went job hunting in New Orleans. Two weeks later he found employment, and Mrs. Paine drove Marina and the baby to New Orleans. But in September Oswald was again jobless. Mrs. Paine, whose kindness seems remarkable, once more drove to New Orleans, took the woman and the baby back to Texas.

During that period Oswald became the self-declared chairman of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro outfit. He also got a card at a New Orleans public library, drew out several spy novels by Ian Fleming (Kennedy’s favorite cloak-and-dagger author), a book about Kennedy called Portrait of a President, another about the Berlin Wall, two novels by Aldous Huxley, and several books on Soviet and Chinese Communism—nearly all of which were distinctly anti-Communist in flavor —and a book describing the assassination of Huey Long.

To Dallas. Was Oswald even then planning the assassination of the President? The chronology of his later actions tells much—even while leaving the answer tantalizingly beyond reach.

On Sept. 26, just a few days after his wife returned to Texas, Oswald got hold of a car (where, no one yet knows) and drove to Mexico City. He showed up at the Cuban consulate and applied for a transit visa for Moscow via Havana. Told that the procedure would take as long as twelve days, Oswald got angry (or so the Cubans claim), walked out slamming the door. Next day he appeared at the offices of the Russian consul-general, described himself as a militant Communist, asked for a visa for the Soviet Union. The consul told Oswald that there would be a delay of perhaps four months. Again Oswald stalked out in indignation.

On the very same day that Oswald left for Mexico—Sept. 26—the White House had announced that President Kennedy would visit Dallas, the precise date unspecified.

Oswald returned to his family on Oct. 4. He drew unemployment insurance for a week or so. And then one day Mrs. Paine and Marina heard from friends that there was a job opening at the Texas State Book Depository, a clearinghouse in Dallas for public school textbooks. They told Oswald. He immediately went to the building, which fronts on the main thoroughfares leading into the Dallas business district, and applied for the job. On Oct. 15—at about the time his wife had their second child—he went to work as an order filler at $1.25 an hour. He had the run of the building, roamed over seven floors as he collected books for shipment.

Though Marina was staying at the Paine house in nearby Irving, Oswald himself took a small $8-a-week room on North Beckley in Dallas, under the name of O. H. Lee—a play on his real name. He visited his wife on weekends. Once Marina found a carbine wrapped in a blanket and hidden in the Paines’ garage. It was Oswald’s. He had bought it from a Chicago mail-order house on March 20, along with a four-power telescopic sight. He had paid $19.95 for gun and sight and had instructed a gunsmith, located near the Paine home, not only to mount the scope but to sight the weapon in for him (cost: $6). Marina wanted Oswald to get rid of the weapon, but he refused. He also got furious because Marina tried to telephone him at his Dallas rooming house; she had been told that there was no roomer there by the name of Lee H. Oswald, and she was puzzled. He did not try to explain why he was using a phony name.

The Murder. Meanwhile Oswald continued working at the warehouse. On Nov. 6 Pierre Salinger disclosed Kennedy’s Dallas date: Nov. 22. On the night of Thursday, Nov. 21, Oswald stayed at the Paine house in Irving—a departure from his routine of weekend visits. He went to bed early. Next morning the Dallas Morning News published a map showing the route of the presidential motorcade. On the same morning, Oswald got a ride to work with a neighbor, Wesley Frazier. Oswald was carrying a long package, wrapped in brown paper, told Frazier that it contained window shades.

At about noon a Negro employee said to Oswald: “Let’s go down and watch the President go by.” Oswald declined.

At 12:31 the President’s Lincoln limousine passed by at a speed of 12 to 15 m.p.h. In the car, Texas Governor John Connally, who was seated directly in front of Kennedy, heard a shot. “I turned to my right,” he recalled later, from his own hospital bed. “The President had slumped . . . Then I was hit, and I knew I’d been hit badly. I thought, my God, they’re going to kill us all.”

What actually happened was made horrifyingly clear in color films taken by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas clothing manufacturer and an amateur movieman. The strip runs for about 20 seconds—an eternity of history. Kennedy was waving to a friendly crowd. Then came the first shot, and he clutched at his throat with both hands. Connally turned around, raised his right hand toward the President, then fell backward into his wife’s lap as the second shot struck him. The third shot, all too literally, exploded in Kennedy’s head. In less than an instant, Jackie was up, climbing back over the trunk of the car, seeking help. She reached out her right hand, caught the hand of a Secret Service man who was running to catch up, and in one desperate tug pulled him aboard. Then, in less time than it takes to tell it, she was back cradling her husband’s head in her lap.

“Wasn’t It Terrible?” Just after the presidential car sped off, Warehouse Superintendent Roy S. Truly, who had just stepped outside his building into the sideline crush of well wishers on Elm Street, saw a motorcycle cop running through the crowd, knocking people out of the way as he made for the door of the warehouse. Truly joined him, led him to the elevator. An upstairs elevator gate was open, immobilizing the whole system. Truly bounded up a staircase with the cop behind him, his revolver drawn. Off the second-floor landing the cop saw a lunch room. He ran inside, saw a man standing next to a Coke machine. It was Lee Harvey Oswald. The cop asked Truly: “This boy work here?” Truly said yes. At that the officer wheeled and ran up the steps, somehow convinced that any sniper in the building must be a stranger and not an employee.

Carrying his Coke, Oswald ambled into a nearby office. A switchboard operator said, “Wasn’t that terrible—the President being shot?” Oswald mumbled something unintelligible, went out of the office, walked down the steps and slipped through the crowd outside. He walked for several blocks, doubled back to Elm Street, approached a bus, rapped on the door and was admitted by the driver even though it was not a regular stop. The bus soon got snarled in a traffic jam caused by the excitement of the assassination. A motorist who was stalled in front of the bus got out and went back to tell the driver about the murder. Oswald got up and said to the driver, “Give me a transfer.” The driver punched the transfer slip. Oswald took it and got out.

The Arrest. It was now about 12:45. Oswald walked a few blocks and hailed a cab. He told the driver to take him to the 500 block on North Beckley—five blocks beyond his rooming house. The fare was 950, and Oswald added a nickel tip. He went to his room, quickly changed his coat for a windbreaker and left, taking with him a .38-caliber revolver. He stood momentarily at a corner bus stop, then turned, walked swiftly down the street and turned into East 10th Street. Patrolman J. D. Tippit, cruising alone in Dallas police squad car 10, drove by. He had already received an all-points bulletin about a man answering Oswald’s description; back at the warehouse, after police had assembled all the employees, Superintendent Truly had noticed Oswald’s absence. Oswald was now wanted for questioning.

Tippit stopped Oswald, got out of his car to question him. Oswald pulled his revolver, shot three times, and Tippit fell dead. Passersby saw Oswald run into a vacant lot, discard his jacket and empty three spent shells from the revolver. The manager of a shoe store saw Oswald leap into the entrance way of the store as a police car, its siren wailing, shot past. Catching his breath, Oswald ran up the street and entered a movie house. The shoe store manager alerted the theater staff. By 1:45 cops had converged on the theater, walked inside, ordered the lights up. They found Oswald and overpowered him after he misfired in an attempt to shoot one of the officers. He was dragged fighting into a car and hustled to police headquarters, where only 45 hours later, he himself was murdered.

The Evidence. In the warehouse, at a sixth-floor window overlooking Elm Street, police found the killer’s roost. Remains of a fried-chicken dinner, an empty Coke bottle, and three empty shell cases lay near by. The assassin had stacked book boxes against one wall so that he could not be seen through the window. He had sat on another box. Beneath the outside window, he had placed three boxes that served as a rifle rest. From that he had been able to track the slow-moving presidential car until it got past him, then got off three shots in about five seconds. After he fired, Oswald ran toward the center of the building and down an aisle to a stair well door. There, behind a few boxes of books, he thrust his carbine. He then hurried down the steps — and perhaps because he heard the oncoming foot steps of the motorcycle cop and Superintendent Truly — he ducked quickly into the lunch room.

Though he never got his day in court, and though he denied any guilt, there could be little doubt of Oswald’s guilt. FBI agents checked the gun and its serial number, traced it to the Chicago mail-order house and found the order slip. It was a 6.5-mm., Carcano, bolt-action surplus Italian military carbine. It had been sent to an “A. Hidell” at a post-office box in Dallas. That name and box number were found later among Oswald’s effects. Serial number records showed that Oswald’s was the same rifle that had been found in the warehouse. An autopsy on Kennedy’s body produced one bullet that matched the gun. On the floor of the Lincoln, a second matching slug was found. The third was retrieved from the stretcher that carried Kennedy. Ballistic tests proved that Oswald’s gun fired the fatal bullets. Oswald’s palm prints were found on book cartons near the window, on the wrapping paper that was used for the “window shades,” and on the carbine itself. Experts who later test-fired similar carbines agreed that a skilled man could fire such a gun three times in five seconds with practice.

The Motive? But why had he done it? Perhaps it was merely the power of suggestion. Throughout his whole lifetime, Lee Oswald was plainly a man of demonic frustrations and fanaticisms. His idol seems to have been Fidel Castro. In recent broadcasts, Castro called Kennedy a demagogue, a cretin and a member of an oligarchic family. “We are prepared,” he declared, “to fight” the U.S. American leaders “should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” Maybe all Oswald wanted to be was a hero to his depraved hero.

In the frantic aftermath of the assassination, Texas, Dallas and federal authorities rushed to assemble and sift through every detail surrounding the event. But all those overlapping efforts will become secondary. Last week President Johnson named a high-level commission to handle the official investigation. Members: Chief Justice Earl Warren (chairman), Georgia’s Democratic Senator Richard B. Russell, Kentucky’s Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, Louisiana’s Democratic Congressman Hale Boggs, Michigan’s Republican Congressman Gerald Ford, ex-CIA Chief Allen W. Dulles, and onetime Presidential Disarmament Adviser John J. McCloy. The President’s instructions to the commission: to “satisfy itself that the truth is known as far as it can be discovered, and to report its findings and conclusions to him, to the American people and the world.”

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