who kills kenedy

Who Killed President Kennedy?
This series of essays isn’t going to give you the answer, but it will try to illustrate the best way to think about the question.

Much of the evidence in the JFK assassination is inconclusive and open to a variety of interpretations. There are, however, some basic, indisputable, uncontroversial facts. These facts suggest only two realistic solutions, both of which revolve around the role of Lee Harvey Oswald:

either Oswald killed Kennedy, with or without associates,
or he was set up in advance to take the blame.
The Basic Facts of the JFK Assassination
On 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was a passenger in a motorcade through the centre of Dallas, Texas. At about 12:30pm, the motorcade was in Dealey Plaza, just outside the downtown area, when several gunshots were fired.1 Altogether, three people were injured:

President Kennedy was wounded in the back and the throat, and, fatally, in the head.2
The governor of Texas, John Connally, who was sitting directly in front of Kennedy, sustained three wounds:
one bullet hit him in the back, destroyed four inches of one rib, punctured his right lung, and came out of the right side of his chest;
his right wrist was shattered;
and a fragment of a bullet was embedded in his left thigh.3
A bystander, James Tague, received a slight cut on the cheek from the impact of a bullet to the concrete curb near his feet.4
The Bullet Shells and the Rifle
At the time of the shooting, the presidential limousine was heading west on Elm Street, and had just passed the Texas School Book Depository, which contained publishers’ offices and a book warehouse. A window was half open at the eastern end of the sixth floor of the building.5 Three empty bullet shells were discovered just inside this window. Elsewhere on the sixth floor, a rifle was discovered. Tests showed that those bullet shells had been fired from that rifle.6

Lee Harvey Oswald and the Sixth–Floor Rifle
The rifle had been purchased several months earlier by mail order. The name on the mail order coupon was a pseudonym known to have been used elsewhere by Lee Harvey Oswald. The handwriting on the coupon matched Oswald’s. The supplier had sent the rifle to a post office box rented by Oswald.7

Oswald at the Scene of the Crime
Oswald worked in the Texas School Book Depository, and had legitimate access to the sixth floor. He claimed to have been elsewhere at the time of the shooting, but there were no eye–witnesses to support his alibi.

Two Solutions to the JFK Assassination
On the face of it, this is an open–and–shut case: Oswald did it. The only realistic alternative is that Oswald had been carefully framed in advance.

The other, purely theoretical, solution, that some other lone nut happened to stumble across Oswald’s rifle and decided to take a few pot shots at the president, is too unlikely to be worth considering.

Either Oswald did it, or he was set up. Let’s examine each of these options in turn.