JFK — What Really Happened?
On 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while travelling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top limousine.
It was one of the defining moments of the twentieth century.
At approximately 12:30 p.m., as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza, shots were fired.
Kennedy was struck and critically wounded.
Texas Governor John Connally, who was travelling in the same vehicle, was also wounded.
The presidential limousine immediately accelerated towards Parkland Memorial Hospital, where doctors attempted to save Kennedy’s life.
At 1:00 p.m., President John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead.
He was 46 years old.
The Motorcade
Kennedy had travelled to Texas as part of a political visit intended to strengthen Democratic support ahead of the 1964 presidential election.
On the morning of 22 November, Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy flew from Fort Worth to Dallas.
They were greeted by large crowds.
The presidential motorcade then began travelling towards a scheduled luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart.
The route took the convoy through Dealey Plaza.
As Kennedy’s limousine passed the Texas School Book Depository, shots were heard.
Witnesses reacted in confusion.
Some believed the noises were fireworks.
Others immediately recognised gunfire.
Within seconds, the president had been struck.
Dealey Plaza
The assassination was captured in photographs, eyewitness testimony and, most famously, the home movie filmed by Abraham Zapruder.
The film recorded the presidential limousine as the shots were fired and later became one of the most closely examined pieces of evidence in the investigation.
Police quickly began searching the surrounding area.
Attention soon focused on the Texas School Book Depository, where employees reported that one worker, Lee Harvey Oswald, appeared to be missing.
On an upper floor, investigators discovered a rifle and spent cartridge cases.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was a former United States Marine who had previously lived in the Soviet Union before returning to America.
After leaving the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald travelled across Dallas.
Around 1:15 p.m., Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit was shot and killed in the Oak Cliff district.
Witnesses later identified Oswald as the gunman.
Oswald was arrested shortly afterwards inside the Texas Theatre.
He was questioned in connection with both Tippit’s murder and Kennedy’s assassination.
Oswald denied killing the president.
He would never stand trial.
The Murder of Oswald
On 24 November 1963, two days after Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald was being transferred from Dallas police headquarters to the county jail.
The transfer was being broadcast live on television.
As Oswald was escorted through the basement of police headquarters, nightclub owner Jack Ruby stepped forward and shot him at close range.
Oswald died later that day.
Ruby’s killing of Oswald immediately intensified public suspicion.
The man accused of assassinating the president had been murdered before he could be tried, questioned publicly or cross-examined in court.
That single event helped create an atmosphere in which doubts surrounding the assassination would endure for decades.
The Warren Commission
President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy’s assassination.
Its report, published in 1964, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone.
The Commission determined that Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository using a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
It also concluded that Jack Ruby had acted alone when he killed Oswald.
For many Americans, however, the report did not end the matter.
Questions remained about eyewitness testimony, the number and direction of the shots, Oswald’s background, intelligence agency knowledge, Jack Ruby’s connections and the handling of evidence.
The Single-Bullet Theory
One of the most debated aspects of the Warren Commission investigation became known as the single-bullet theory.
The Commission concluded that one bullet passed through Kennedy’s upper back and neck before striking Governor Connally and causing several additional wounds.
Critics argued that the bullet’s path appeared improbable.
Supporters pointed to the relative positions of Kennedy and Connally inside the limousine and argued that the trajectory was consistent with a shot fired from above and behind.
The disagreement remains one of the best-known controversies associated with the assassination.
Was There a Second Gunman?
Many witnesses in Dealey Plaza believed that shots had come from the area of the grassy knoll ahead and to the right of Kennedy’s limousine.
Others believed the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository.
Some reported hearing shots from more than one direction.
Later investigations examined whether acoustic evidence indicated the presence of another gunman.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations, reporting in 1979, concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, partly on the basis of acoustic evidence.
That acoustic interpretation was later strongly challenged, and the question remains disputed.
No second gunman has ever been conclusively identified.
Intelligence Agencies and Oswald
Another enduring source of controversy concerns what American intelligence agencies knew about Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination.
Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959.
He later returned to the United States.
In 1963 he travelled to Mexico City, where he contacted both the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic missions.
The CIA and FBI possessed information relating to Oswald before Kennedy’s death.
The extent to which that information was understood, shared or acted upon has remained a central subject of historical investigation.
Over the decades, the release of previously classified records has revealed further detail about intelligence monitoring surrounding Oswald.
Those records have fuelled both legitimate historical inquiry and more speculative theories.
Why the Case Still Matters
The assassination of John F. Kennedy was not simply the murder of an American president.
It became a crisis of public confidence.
The killing happened in daylight, in front of witnesses and cameras.
The suspected assassin was arrested within hours.
Then he was murdered while in police custody.
An official investigation declared the case solved.
Yet public doubt never disappeared.
That combination ensured that the Kennedy assassination would become one of the most studied and disputed criminal investigations in modern history.
So What Really Happened?
The strongest body of physical and investigative evidence links Lee Harvey Oswald to the assassination.
He worked in the building from which investigators concluded the shots were fired.
A rifle linked to him was recovered there.
Cartridge cases were found near the firing position.
Evidence also connected him to the later murder of Officer J. D. Tippit.
The official conclusion remains that Oswald assassinated Kennedy and acted alone.
What remains unresolved is not necessarily whether Oswald fired at the president, but whether the full story ended with him.
Was he acting entirely alone?
Did anyone encourage, assist or manipulate him?
Did intelligence agencies fail to understand information already in their possession?
Were later investigative mistakes evidence of conspiracy, institutional protection or simply the confusion that follows an extraordinary national crisis?
Those questions remain debated.
More than six decades after Dealey Plaza, the Kennedy assassination still sits at the boundary between established history and unresolved suspicion.
And that is why the case continues to matter.
For the full reconstruction of the forty-eight hours surrounding the assassination, read JFK by Bill Stewart, available through Amazon Kindle.