The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy became one of the watershed moments of the 20th century.
Just after noon on November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine.
Oswald fired three shots from a sixth floor window on the Texas School Depository. The first shot entered JFK’s body from the back of the neck and exited through his throat. The slug changed trajectory on exit and wounded Governor Connally, who was sitting on the front seat of the open limousine. The second, fatal shot, struck the President in the head, shattering his skull. A third shot was also fired, but missed.
In the aftermath of the event, one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine with an affinity of all things Soviet, was apprehended in connection with the killing of a police officer 45 minutes after Kennedy was shot dead. Oswald flatly denied killing the President, claiming instead that he was a ‘patsy’ (scapegoat).
Oswald himself was killed while being transferred from the city to the county jail two days later. A nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, shot him in front of multiple witnesses. Ruby claimed he acted alone, and his alleged motive for killing Oswald was his own distraught state at the killing of a ‘great man’ (Kennedy). Ruby died of lung cancer three years later. To the very end, he maintained he always ‘acted alone.’
The events that unfolded on that fateful Texas afternoon, and the sensational circumstances surrounding the killing of Oswald, sparked countless conspiracy that have persisted to this very day.
The question who really killed Kennedy has been asked over and over, and over time, the whole event has taken quasi-legendary connotations.
The full truth may soon be revealed, however, as President Trump has authorised the release of a tranche of documentation that was withheld in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, and during the investigation that ensued.