Simple Questions About the JFK Assassination

How long had Oswald worked at the Texas School Book Depository?

Lee Oswald began work at the TSBD on Wednesday 16 October 1963, two days before his 24th birthday. The assassination occurred at the end of his fifth full week of employment, although there was no work done on the afternoon of the assassination.

Did Oswald have any children?

Lee Oswald had two children:

1. June Lee Oswald was born in Minsk, Belarus (at that time, in the USSR), on 15 February 1962.
2. Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald was born in Dallas on 20 October 1963.

Marina Oswald, Oswald’s widow, married again in 1965 and later had a son.

Are there any recordings of Oswald’s voice?

Several short film and audio recordings exist of Oswald answering questions from reporters inside the Dallas police headquarters after his arrest. Most of them can be found on YouTube and other video-clip websites.

Lengthier recordings also survive of two radio programmes in which Oswald participated while working with pro- and anti-Castro groups in New Orleans three months before the assassination. The Mary Ferrell Foundation’s website contains a page with links to the recordings and transcripts.

Who was ‘Lee Henry Oswald’?

The name ‘Lee Henry Oswald’ occurs in several official documents which were created over several years, before and after the JFK assassination. In 1960, while Oswald was living in the Soviet Union, the CIA’s counter-intelligence department opened a file on Oswald under the name ‘Lee Henry Oswald’, apparently in order to help the identification of Soviet moles within the agency. There is much debate about whether Oswald’s defection in 1959 was genuine or whether he was part of an established pattern of false defectors at around this time. A good deal of Oswald’s behaviour in the years before the assassination suggests that he had some sort of low-level association with one or more US intelligence agencies.

Other names that appear in the official record include ‘Harvey Lee Oswald’ and ‘Alek James Hidell’, both of which may have been generated by Oswald himself. It was claimed after the assassination that Oswald rented a room in a borading house under the name ‘O.H. Lee’, although this may have been a misunderstanding on the part of the building’s landlady; one of her rooms had earlier been rented to a man named H. Lee, who had no connection to Oswald or the assassination.

When was Oswald arrested for JFK’s murder?

Lee Oswald was in fact arrested not for the murder of President Kennedy but for that of a Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit, who was shot dead in a suburb of Dallas about 40 minutes after the shootings in Dealey Plaza. Oswald was arrested for Tippit’s murder at around 1:50pm on 22 November 1963. His arrest took place inside a cinema, the Texas Theatre, which was situated a couple of miles south of Dealey Plaza.

How many floors were there in the Texas School Book Depository?

The Texas School Book Depository has seven floors and a basement. In 1963:

• Books were stored on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors.
• The second, third and fourth floors contained offices.
• The first floor (in American terminology, i.e. the ground floor) contained an area in which books were stored, packed and despatched, as well as a counter for customers who collected books in person. It also contained a small room in the north-east corner in which Lee Oswald appears to have eaten his lunch a few minutes before the assassination.
• The basement was not used as a working area.

More than half a century later, the Sixth-Floor Museum runs a permanent exhibition about the assassination on the sixth floor as well as a space for talks and temporary exhibitions on the seventh floor. The second, third, fourth and fifth floors are local government offices. A modern annexe contains a gift shop.

How many elevators and staircases were there in the TSBD?

In the north-west corner there was a rickety wooden staircase and two elevators, all of which linked all seven floors. These stairs and elevators were largely for the use of warehouse employees, such as Oswald. Close to the main entrance in the south-east corner, there was a staircase to the second floor and an elevator that went as high as the fourth floor. These were largely for the use of office staff. Nowadays, a different arrangement of elevators keeps the sixth-floor museum’s visitors away from the local government workers.

How many people filmed the assassination?

Four people filmed President Kennedy during the few seconds in which the shooting occurred:

1. Abraham Zapruder, who was the closest of the four and whose film is the clearest and most complete record of the event.
2. Orville Nix.
3. Marie Muchmore.
4. Charles Bronson, whose film disproves the heavily promoted theory that a Secret Service agent shot JFK by accident.

Four more people almost filmed the JFK assassination, but missed it. Mark Bell, Elsie Dorman, Robert Hughes, and Tina Towner all captured the car going past them, then stopped filming during the brief period of the shooting itself. They did that because, in 1963, home movie film was expensive and each reel rarely contained more than a minute or two’s worth of film. That’s also why most of the film clips last only a few seconds. The Zapruder film is the exception; the motorcade sequence lasts about 26 seconds.

For more information about the many home movies taken in Dealey Plaza, see the Mary Ferrell Foundation website and Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain, Yeoman Press, 1994.

What camera did Abraham Zapruder use?

Abraham Zapruder used a Bell and Howell 414 PD Director Series, which was fitted with a 9–27mm f1.8 zoom lens. The camera had two speed settings: 18 and 48 frames per second. The FBI examined the camera and found that Zapruder filmed his assassination footage at an average speed of 18.3 frames per second. For technical details, see https://kenrahn.com/Marsh/Zavada/zstudy4a.pdf (PDF). The camera and the original home movie are currently in the National Archives.

Are there any images of the gunman or gunmen?

Probably not, although a couple of candidates have been put forward.

Two short home movie clips, by Robert Hughes and Charles Bronson, capture the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as President Kennedy’s car turns left onto Elm Street, just a few seconds before the shooting began. It has been claimed that the Hughes film shows a human-like shape moving in the so-called sniper’s nest window. The shape is very faint, and there is certainly no way to identify who the person is, if indeed it is a person. The shape could be light playing on the cardboard boxes behind the window, or perhaps just an artefact of the film process. Bronson was standing further away than Hughes; his film overall is less clear than that of Hughes, and does not appear to show anything in the window.

A Polaroid photo, taken at close range by Mary Moorman a fraction of a second after the fatal shot, shows President Kennedy with the grassy knoll in the background. It has been claimed that the head and upper torso of a gunman can be seen in the foliage above the fence on the knoll. The image contains a bright spot at about the area of the supposed gunman’s chest, from which the figure gets its name: ‘Badgeman’. This part occupies only a very small area of the photograph, and details are difficult to pick out. ‘Badgeman’ could easily just be light and shadows among the foliage. Even among those who think there was a gunman on the grassy knoll, few people these days take the ‘Badgeman’ idea seriously.

There are two films which do not show a gunman but may show something equally remarkable. David Wiegman and James Darnell, professional news cameramen in the motorcade, captured the front steps of the book depository a few seconds after the shooting. In the shadowy left-hand corner of the doorway is a figure who, to many viewers, looks not unlike Lee Oswald. One of the Warren Report’s notable weaknesses was its argument that Oswald was on the sixth floor, and it is not at all inconceivable that the accused assassin was in fact elsewhere. The copies of the films currently in circulation do not show the figure in sufficient detail to allow us to definitively identify or eliminate Oswald, but better-quality versions may exist. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see What Was Lee Harvey Oswald’s Alibi? and Who Is ‘Prayer Man’?.

Who were the three men on the grassy knoll steps?

Only one of the three men has been identified. Emmett Hudson, who worked as a groundsman in Dealey Plaza, was the man wearing a hat and light-coloured trousers. He was standing about halfway down the steps, just to the west of a man wearing dark clothes. A third man, wearing a red shirt or jacket and dark trousers, was standing two or three steps lower down. Immediately after the shooting, the man next to Hudson ran up the steps and out of sight, hidden by the low concrete wall and the shadow of the trees. Hudson and the man in the red top casually sat down on the steps and merged into the crowd that converged on the grassy knoll.

There are several good-quality reproductions of photographs of the scene in Robert Groden, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald, Viking Penguin, 1995, pp.20-57. For more about Emmett Hudson, see Grassy Knoll Witnesses.

How many people were shot in the JFK assassination?

Altogether, five people were shot, three of them in Dealey Plaza:

1. President Kennedy sustained non-fatal injuries to his upper back and his throat, and a fatal wound to his head.
2. John Connally, the governor of Texas, who was sitting in front of Kennedy, was wounded in his torso, right wrist and left leg.
3. A bystander, James Tague, was cut on the cheek by a fragment of metal or concrete when a bullet struck the curb near his feet.
4. Police officer J.D. Tippit was shot dead in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, around 40 minutes after the shooting of JFK and Connally. There is much debate about whether Tippit was shot by Oswald, or by someone trying to implicate Oswald, or whether his murder was unrelated to the shooting in Dealey Plaza.
5. Two days later, on Sunday 24 November 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters.

How many bullet shells were discovered?

According to the earliest police documents, two empty bullet shells and one intact bullet were discovered close to the south-easternmost window on the sixth floor of the TSBD. According to later reports, there were three empty shells and no intact bullets by the sixth-floor window. One intact bullet was discovered inside the rifle which had been hidden under piles of boxes elsewhere on the sixth floor.

What happened to the rest of Oswald’s rifle bullets?

After Lee Oswald’s arrest, the Dallas police searched his person and his belongings. Apart from the one intact bullet and the two or three shells discovered on the sixth floor, no other rifle bullets were found. If, as the official account has it, Oswald had fired a rifle during the assassination, he must have been equipped with only four bullets.

Did Jack Ruby shoot President Kennedy?

No, Jack Ruby did not shoot President Kennedy. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who may or may not have shot President Kennedy.

The very large group of people who almost certainly did not shoot President Kennedy includes: Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, George Hickey, Roscoe White, Chauncey Holt, Charles Harrelson, and anyone who has ever claimed to have shot President Kennedy.

What type of hat was Jack Ruby wearing when he shot Oswald?

Ruby was wearing a grey fedora. It is a size 7.25, and was manufactured by Cavanagh Hats of New York. It has Ruby's name engraved in gold lettering on the inside. Jack Ruby's hat was sold at auction in 2009 for $53,775, and is now in the collection of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.

What happened to Jack Ruby after the JFK assassination?

On 14 March 1964, Jack Ruby was convicted of murdering Oswald, and was sentenced to death. He took his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. On 5 October 1966 his conviction was overturned due to a procedural error during his trial, and a new trial ordered. He remained in prison pending his second trial, which was due to take place early in 1967.

On 9 December 1966, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas with pneumonia, and within a few days was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Three weeks later, on 3 January 1967, Jack Ruby died in the same hospital in which President Kennedy and Lee Oswald had died.

For more about the last years of Jack Ruby, see Silvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact: the Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report, Vintage, 1992, pp.452-454.

How many official investigations were there?

Nine official bodies have looked into various aspects of the JFK assassination. At least three other official investigations were proposed, but did not come into existence:

1. Three weeks after the assassination, the FBI produced a lengthy but very superficial report, which failed to mention all of the wounds and spent only one page on the details of the assassination.
2. The Warren Commission was established on 29 November, and issued its 900-page Report in September 1964, followed two months later by 26 volumes of testimony and other documentation.
3. Shortly after the assassination, members of each House suggested setting up their own investigations. Both groups were persuaded that the Warren Commission’s investigation would be more authoritative if it had no competitors.
4. The Attorney General of Texas had set up a Court of Inquiry on 25 November to investigate the crime. Activity behind the scenes in Washington ensured that the Texan inquiry was in effect closed down and absorbed into the Warren Commission. A token 20-page report was submitted to the Governor of Texas, John Connally, in October 1964.
5. The Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, assembled a group of four doctors in 1968 to respond to some of the earliest published criticisms of the Warren Report, such as the observation that the pathologists at the autopsy had noted an entry wound in President Kennedy’s skull that was too low to have been fired from the sixth floor of the TSBD. The Clark Panel moved the entrance wound up by four inches (ten centimetres), thereby allowing a hypothetical lone gunman to have fired the fatal shot from the sixth floor.
6. In 1966, Theodore Kupferman, a Republican Congressman, responded to the increasing public criticisms of the Warren Commission by proposing that a committee should review the work of the Commission. His proposal was unsuccessful.
7. A New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, stood trial in 1969, accused of participation in the assassination. He was rapidly acquitted. The investigation of Shaw by the New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, forms the central storyline in Oliver Stone’s film, JFK.
8. The Rockefeller Commission was set up in 1975 to investigate the activities of the CIA within the US. The television broadcast that year of the Zapruder film had forced the Rockefeller Commission to acknowledge, for the first time in an official report, that Kennedy’s head had moved sharply backwards as a result of the fatal shot, a fact which the Warren Report had for some reason neglected to mention. The Rockefeller Commission also refuted the theory that two of the three tramps photographed in Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination were Watergate conspirators.
9. The Church Committee in 1976 reported on the illegal gathering of information by the CIA and the FBI, and was very critical of the role of both agencies in withholding information from the Warren Commission.
10. The House Select Committee on Assassinations Report in 1979 also criticised the CIA and FBI, as well as the Secret Service and the Warren Commission itself, and concluded that “President John F. Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy” (HSCA Report, p.3).
11. The Assassination Records Review Board, which operated between 1992 and 1998, was set up to release to the public the many secret records relating to the assassination. It did not investigate the facts of the assassination, but did interview several interested parties. Perhaps the Board’s most important achievements were the belated publication of the HSCA’s Lopez Report, which dealt with Lee Oswald’s impersonation in Mexico City a few weeks before the assassination, and the revelation that George Joannides, the CIA officer who acted as a liaison between the agency and the HSCA, had been personally involved in 1963 with a CIA-funded anti-Castro organisation that had interacted with Oswald in New Orleans and had helped him to create a political persona that would be used against him after the assassination.

For more information, see these sources:

• All of the official reports, together with a large number of supporting documents, can be found at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website.
• Gerald D. McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, University Press of Kansas, 2005, contains the most complete account of the earliest investigations.
• The most revealing account of the HSCA’s activities is by an insider, Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993.

How many witnesses appeared before the Warren Commission?

The Warren Commission took evidence from 489 people. Of these, 395 testified in the presence only of a lawyer and a stenographer. Earl Warren was present for the testimony of the other 94 witnesses, along with one or more of the other six Commissioners:

• Gerald Ford heard the testimony of 70 witnesses;
• Allen Dulles: 60;
• John Cooper: 50;
• John McCloy: 35;
• Hale Boggs: 20;
• Richard Russell: 6.

The Warren Commission’s day-to-day business was run by J. Lee Rankin, its chief counsel. Rankin’s team of about 30 lawyers decided which witnesses to call and how those witnesses should be questioned. With the exception of Allen Dulles, who had been relieved by Kennedy of his duties as director of the CIA, all the Commissioners had full-time jobs. Dulles, McCloy and Rankin had the most substantial influence on the Commission’s executive sessions; the other Commissioners performed a largely ceremonial role.