Welcome back to the deep dive. We are doing something
a little different today. Usually when people
bring up the topic we're about to cover, they
they bring a cork board, some red string and
about six different theories about the CIA or
the mafia. It is the ultimate rabbit hole. I
mean, you can spend a lifetime digging into it.
You will never, ever find the bottom. We are
talking about the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
but. And this is the key. We are explicitly not
talking about the grassy knoll or the umbrella
man or, you know, the magic bullet trajectory.
We're stripping all of that away. All of it.
To look at the one thing that gets so lost in
that just the noise of conspiracy, the actual
biography of the man holding the rifle. Leah
Hervey Oswald. Exactly. Because I think for most
of us, for me anyway, Oswald is this this two
dimensional figure. He's either the lone nut
villain from the official story. Or he's the
innocent Patsy. Right. He's a symbol. He's not
a human being. But when you sent over the source
material for this, I mean, the biographical data,
the psychiatric reports from his childhood, the
witness testimonies, I just realized I didn't
know this guy at all. And that's a very, very
common reaction. Oswald is so often treated as
a plot device in his own story. But when you
actually read the documents, the Warren Commission
exhibits or the House Select Committee reports
or his own diary, which we have excerpts from,
you see a very specific and... a very consistent
personality pattern emerge. So that's the mission
for this deep dive. We want to try and understand
the psychology and the specific movements of
Oswald. Not the myth, but the man. And frankly,
the man is so much stranger than the myth. I
mean, the sheer volume of failure in his life
is just, it's staggering. It is a catalog of
rejection from start to finish. And the fact
that he attempted a high profile political assassination
before Kennedy, that was the detail that really,
really stuck with me. The general Walker attempt.
It's well, I think it's the skeleton key to the
whole case. If you can understand why he shot
at Walker, you understand Dallas in November.
OK, so let's get into it. We aren't going to
go chronologically just for the sake of it, but
because the timeline actually builds this. This
pressure cooker. We have to start with the environment
that produced him. And the source material paints
a pretty bleak picture of his entry into the
world. It was unstable from day one, or actually
from day minus 60. Lee was born in New Orleans
in October 1939, but his father, Robert E. Lee
Oswald, died of a sudden heart attack two months
before Lee was even born. So there's a ghost
at the head of the table immediately. No father
figure from the very start. Exactly. And his
mother, Marguerite. She is really the central
context for his early life. You read the social
worker reports of the later testimony from family
and she's described as incredibly difficult.
The words you see are self -involved, conflicted
and just. She struggled to maintain any kind
of stability whatsoever. And the stat that just
jumped out at me that quantifies that instability
was the moving. I moved a few times as a kid
and I hated it. But Oswald. He moved 21 times
by the time he was 17. 21 times. And along with
that, he attended 12 different schools. 12! I
mean, that is almost hard to conceptualize. You're
never in a classroom long enough to learn the
teacher's name, let alone make a single friend.
It guarantees isolation. It's a formula for it.
You are perpetually the new kid. You are always
on the outside looking in. And for a child who
is already... you know, naturally quiet or withdrawn,
that creates a barrier between you and the rest
of the world that just calcifies over time. And
wasn't there a period where she just couldn't
handle it and put him in an orphanage? Yes, the
Bethlehem Orphan Asylum. She put Lee and his
two older brothers, Robert and John, there for
about a year. She claimed she couldn't afford
to take care of them, that she needed to work.
But there's a little detail in there that seems
really important. There is. Here's the nuance
that matters. She left the older brothers there.
But she pulled Lee out early. He was the baby.
He was special. So she creates this dynamic where
he is the only one who matters, but he's also
a burden that she can just, you know, check into
an institution when it's inconvenient. It was
a claustrophobic, confusing bond. The reports
say she slept in the same bed with him until
he was nearly a teenager. She insisted he was
special, that he was smarter than other kids,
but she also completely neglected his emotional
needs. It created this toxic mix of entitlement
and deep, deep resentment. That resentment seems
to boil over in what the notes called the New
York incident. This feels like the villain's
origin story. He's 12 years old, and they've
moved to New York City to live with his half
-brother, John Pick. That's right. This is the
first time we see the fantasy life, the rage,
actually manifest as physical violence. There
was an argument. We don't know the exact trigger,
but Oswald allegedly struck his mother. He hit
her. He did. And when his half -brother's wife,
John's wife, intervened to protect Marguerite,
Oswald pulled a pocket knife on her. A 12 -year
-old pulling a knife on his sister -in -law.
That is not just a temper tantrum. That is a
whole different level. No, and the courts recognized
that. He was truant. He was refusing to go to
school. So they sent him to a juvenile reformatory,
youth house, for observation. And that led to
a psychiatric assessment by Dr. Renatus Hartogs.
This report is one of the most critical documents
we have on Oswald's personality. I have the quote
here. Hartog has diagnosed him with personality
pattern disturbance with schizoid features. Can
we break that down? Because schizoid is a word
people throw around. What does it actually mean
in this context from the 1950s? Well, in that
era's psychiatric terminology, it wasn't about
schizophrenia. It referred to a profound detachment
from social relationships, a very limited range
of emotional expression, and a strong tendency
toward solitary activities. He was a loner who
couldn't connect. But Hartog's went much further
than that. This is the key part. This is the
key part. He noted that Oswald had a vivid fantasy
life, turning around the topics of omnipotence
and power. Omnipotence and power. I mean, that
is a heavy, heavy phrase to describe a 12 -year
-old boy. It means he felt small and powerless
in his real life. No father, no stability, no
friends, no money. So he compensated by building
a world inside his head where he was a giant.
He wanted to be a great man. He fantasized about
controlling the world that was currently controlling
him. The social worker at the time, Evelyn Siegel,
had a really sad but sharp observation about
him. She called him an emotionally starved, affectionless
youngster. She did, and she actually saw hope
for him. This is the tragic part. She recommended
probation, but she insisted he get ongoing psychotherapy.
She warned, and this is on the record, that if
he didn't get help, his behavior would only deteriorate
and his detachment from reality would grow. But
he didn't get the help. No, because just like
she did with everything else, Marguerite ran
away. Before the court could mandate the therapy,
before the system could intervene, she packed
Lee up and moved back to New Orleans. She literally
fled the solution. So he falls right back into
the cracks. He eventually drops out of school
at 17 in the 10th grade, never gets a diploma.
But the notes are really clear that he wasn't
stupid. In fact, he was reading stuff that most
kids his age, even kids in college, wouldn't
touch. Oh, he was a voracious reader. But he
wasn't reading for pleasure. He was reading to
find a key. He felt the world was broken and
unfair, and he was looking for a system, a grand
theory that explained why. And he finds it. He
finds it in the dusty shelves of the New Orleans
Public Libraries. He finds Karl Marx. Which is
just such a bizarre image. It's the mid -1950s.
Eisenhower is president. The Cold War is at its
absolute peak. And here is this lonely teenager
in the Deep South, probably surrounded by crew
cuts and patriotism, deciding he is a Marxist.
It was the ultimate rebellion. It was a way to
feel intellectually superior to everyone around
him. You guys are all living in the delusion
of capitalism. I alone know the truth. By the
time he's 15, he's writing letters to the Socialist
Party of America asking for literature. So he
builds this new identity for himself. I am a
Marxist revolutionary. But then he does something
that seems to completely, totally contradict
that. He joins the United States Marines. It's
the great contradiction of his youth, and it's
a pattern we'll see again and again. So why?
I mean, if you hate the American system, if you
think it's oppressive, why join the most aggressive
arm of its military? There are really two reasons.
The first is simple and practical, to escape
his mother. His brother testified that Lee felt
he was living under the yoke of oppression with
Marguerite. He was 17, he needed a ticket out,
and the Marines were that ticket. And the second
reason? I think the second reason goes back to
Dr. Hartog's report. The fantasy of omnipotence
and power. Where do you find power? in the real
world, the military. It's a place of structure,
of weapons, of control. I think a part of him
was drawn to that, even as his ideology rejected
it. So how did he fit in? I can't imagine this
solitary, bookish Marxist vibing well in the
barracks. He absolutely did not. They called
him Ozzy Rabbit after a cartoon character, partly
because of his name and partly because he was
small and quiet. He was mocked. He was an outsider
there, too. But... And this is critically important
for the events of 1963. He was trained. OK, let's
talk about his shooting skills, because there
is a lot of debate. You see it online all the
time about whether he was actually a good shot.
The Marine records are very clear. In December
1956, shortly after you joined, he was tested
on the shooting range. He scored a 212. That's
out of 250. That score qualified him as a sharpshooter.
And what does that mean in layman's terms? It's
the second highest rating you can get. It's a
good score. It's definitely above average. It
means he was proficient with an M1 Garand rifle
at distances up to 500 yards. But that score
went down later, right? It did. Years later,
in 1959, he was retested and he scored a 191.
That dropped his rating down to marksman, which
is the lowest passing grade. Which is what a
lot of conspiracy theorists point to. See, he
was a lousy shot. Right. But we have to be really
careful with that data. A marksman in the United
States Marine Corps is still a trained shooter.
He knows how to handle a rifle, how to use iron
sights, how to lead a target, how to control
his breathing, how to maintain a weapon. He wasn't
some elite sniper, but he was absolutely not
an amateur. He was competent. And beyond the
rifle, he also had a pretty sensitive job, right?
A security clearance. He did. He was a radar
operator. He worked in a MACS, a Marine Air Control
Squadron. This gave him access to classified
information about U .S. aircraft movements. And
specifically... the locations and altitudes of
the U -2 spy planes. But at the same time, his
behavior was getting more and more erratic. I
saw a note in the file about him shooting himself.
In the elbow, yes. He was playing with an unauthorized
.22 pistol he had smuggled onto the base, and
it went off. He was court -martialed for that.
He was also court -martialed for a separate incident
for fighting with a sergeant who outranked him.
And the jungle incident? That one is so strange.
It's one of those weird telling details. While
he was stationed in the Philippines on sentry
duty one night, he just fired his rifle off into
the dark jungle. He claimed he heard something.
No one else did. He was disciplined for that,
too. It sounds like he was trying to create action,
trying to make something happen in his boring
life. Or the fantasy life was bleeding into reality
again. He was seeing enemies in the shadows that
weren't really there. So he gets sick of the
Marines. He pulls a fast one to get out a few
months early, claiming his mother is sick and
needs his care, which she wasn't really. And
he gets a hardship discharge. And then he executes
what must be the biggest, most audacious plan
of his life up to that point. He defects. October
1959. He'd saved up his Marine pay, about $1
,500. He takes this incredibly convoluted route
of ships and planes to get to Helsinki, Finland,
and then takes the train into Moscow. He walks
into his hotel room and announces to his in -tourist
guide that he wants to defect to the Soviet Union.
He expects a parade. He thinks they're going
to welcome the American comrade with open arms.
He truly does. He thinks he's a big deal. And
instead, they check his visa and tell him it's
expiring in two days. The KGB looked at him.
A 20 -year -old high school dropout with a history
of instability. And they decided he was totally
useless. Or worse, a potential plant. They told
him thanks, but no thanks. Go home. That rejection
must have absolutely shattered him. This was
his grand gesture. It did. And his response was
extreme and extremely theatrical. When the tour
guide came back to his room to tell him he had
to leave, she found him in the bathtub. He had
slashed his left wrist. Was it a genuine suicide
attempt or was it pure theater? It's debated.
But the timing, the superficiality of the cut,
it strongly suggests theater. He did it right
before she was scheduled to arrive. He wanted
to force their hand. He knew the Soviets couldn't
just kick out a bleeding, dying American. It
would be an international incident. And it worked.
It worked perfectly. They hospitalized him. They
put him under psychiatric observation. The irony.
And eventually the KGB decided it was just easier
to let him stay than to deal with the hassle
of deporting him. He even went to the U .S. embassy
in Moscow to, what, make it official? Oh, it
was a huge dramatic scene. He stormed into the
embassy, slammed his U .S. passport on the consul's
desk, and announced, I'm through. He renounced
his citizenship. He even threatened to give up
his radar secrets about the U -2 spy plane. He
wanted to burn the bridge so completely that
he could never go back. So he gets his wish.
He is now, for all intents and purposes, living
in the Soviet Union. And they send him to Minsk.
Which is not exactly Moscow. It's an industrial
city, a provincial capital. They gave him a job
at a radio and electronics factory called Gorizont.
The Horizon Factory. And this is where the fantasy
of being a revolutionary hero collides head on
with the drab reality of communism. Exactly.
We have his historic diary. That's what he called
it, which, again, speaks volumes about his ego.
And he's just complaining constantly. He wrote,
the work is drab. He complained that there was
no nightlife. I mean, he specifically complained
that there were no bowling alleys or nightclubs.
I have to laugh at that. He defects to the worker's
paradise in the middle of the Cold War. And his
main complaint is the lack of bowling. It just
shows his incredible immaturity. He liked the
idea of communism, the theory of it, but he hated
the actual boredom of living in that system.
He had a subsidized apartment. He had good pay
from the factory, plus a subsidy from the Red
Cross. But there was nothing to buy and nothing
to do. But he did find a wife. He did. Marina
Prusakova, she was a 19 -year -old pharmacy student.
They met at a trade union dance. And what was
the attraction there? What did they see in each
other? Well, for her... Lee was exotic. He was
a real American. Even though he was a defector,
he represented the West, a different world. She
probably thought he was a ticket to a better,
more exciting life. For him, having a Russian
wife was like a trophy. It was proof that he
had successfully integrated into this new world.
And they married really quickly. Just six weeks
after they met. It was a whirlwind. But the bloom
came off that rose pretty quickly, too. Almost
immediately. By 1962, the boredom was just unbearable
for him. The novelty was gone. He realized he
wasn't going to be a leader or an important figure
in the Soviet Union. He was just another cog
in a drab machine. So he starts the process to
go back. And the U .S. just lets him back in.
After he renounced his citizenship and threatened
to give away secrets? They did. It was the height
of the Cold War. Bringing a dissolution defector
back was seen as a major propaganda win. See,
even the communists who go there want to come
back to America. They actually gave him a loan
from the embassy to pay for the travel. So in
June of 1962, he arrives back in the U .S. with
Marina and a baby daughter, June. They settle
in the Dallas -Fort Worth area. And this is where
the final slide toward the assassination really
begins. He tries to connect with the local Russian
emigre community in Dallas. These are people
who had fled Stalin, who had escaped the Soviet
Union. They are fiercely, passionately anti -communist.
And Oswald, the genius, walks in talking about
how great Marx is and how the Soviet system has
its good points. It was a complete disaster.
They hated him. They found him arrogant, rude,
and politically naive. They felt sorry for Marina.
They saw her as this poor girl trapped with this
abusive, delusional little man. They would help
her out, give her diapers and food, but they
couldn't stand to be in the same room as Lee.
Except for one guy, George DeMorenschild. He
is the fascinating exception. DeMorenschild was
a wealthy, highly educated, worldly geologist,
much older. And he found Oswald amusing. He was
almost like an anthropological study to him.
He told the Warren Commission later that Oswald
was surprisingly fluent in Russian and had a
sharp, albeit twisted, intellect. I think de
Morenchal is important because he was maybe the
only person giving Oswald the kind of intellectual
respect he craved so badly. I think that's right.
But even he eventually got tired of Oswald's
personality and started to drift away. And as
he drifted, Oswald became more isolated and more
desperate for a cause for something to do. Which
brings us to April 1963, the General Walker attempt.
I really want to slow down here because, as you
said, this completely changes his profile. This
isn't just a theory. It's a documented act. General
Edwin Walker was a major public figure in Dallas
at the time. He was a retired U .S. Army general
who had actually been relieved of command for
promoting right -wing political literature to
his troops. After retiring, he became a staunch
segregationist and a virulent anti -communist
speaker. To Oswald's mind, he was basically the
personification of American fascism. Exactly.
He was the perfect target. Oswald started fixating
on him. He saw Walker as the leader of a dangerous,
burgeoning fascist movement in America. So he
decides to kill him. How much planning went into
this? Was it an impulsive act of rage? No, it
was highly premeditated. This was not a bar fight.
This was a planned political assassination. Oswald
ordered a rifle by mail, a 6 .5 millimeter Mannlicher
Carcano from an ad in American Rifleman magazine.
The same rifle he'd use later. The very same
rifle. He paid $19 .95 plus shipping. Yeah. He
also ordered a revolver at the same time. And
he's an alias to buy it. Yes. A .J. Heidel. He
had a post office box set up under that name,
which is where the weapons were sent. And he
didn't just buy the gun. He stacked out Walker's
house. We know this because police later found
photographs he had taken of Walker's home and
the alley behind it among his possessions. He
studied the bus routes to plan his escape. And
the note, this is the smoking gun for his mindset
at the time. On the night of the attempt, April
10th, he left a multi -page note for Marina,
written in Russian. It didn't mention Walker
by name, but it gave her detailed instructions.
If I am arrested, if I don't return. It detailed
where his money was hidden, how to handle the
rent. It was a soldier's final letter before
a mission. So walk us through the attempt itself.
Walker was at home, sitting at his desk in his
study, working on his taxes. Behind him was a
window facing the alley. Oswald was outside in
the darkness, maybe 100 feet away, aiming that
$20 rifle. He fired one shot. And he missed.
Barely, by less than an inch. The bullet struck
the wooden frame of the window sash. It deflected
just enough to miss Walker's head, though fragments
of the bullet and wood flew into the room and
struck Walker's arm. He had minor injuries. That
is terrifyingly close. A fraction of an inch
and history is different. It is. Walker thought
a rock had been thrown to the window at first.
Oswald turned and ran. He hid the rifle wrapped
in a blanket near some railroad tracks and took
a bus home. He came in the door, white as a sheet
according to Marina's testimony, and confessed
to her, I shot Walker. And Marina didn't turn
him in. She didn't go to the police. She was
terrified. You have to put yourself in her shoes.
She's a Soviet citizen in Cold War America. She
barely speaks English. She has a baby. And her
husband has just confessed to trying to kill
a famous general. She thought they would both
be deported or imprisoned. She made him promise
never to do it again. This event is so critical
because it proves he was a hunter of fascists,
which explains those bizarre backyard photos.
Right. Around this same time, March of 63, he
had Marina take these now infamous pictures of
him in their backyard. He's dressed all in black,
holding the Carcano rifle in one hand and two
communist newspapers, the Militant and the Worker
in the other. And he has the revolver holstered
on his hip. It looks like a cosplay photo for
a revolutionary. It's so performative. It is
completely performative. He sent a copy to a
friend with the inscription written on it, Hunter
of Fascists. Ha ha ha. That laugh, ha ha ha.
It's almost supervillain territory. It's chilling.
It shows that he was actively creating a persona
for himself. He wasn't just Lee, the warehouse
worker. He was an Avenger. He was a historical
force. The Walker attempt proves, beyond any
doubt, that he didn't need a conspiracy or a
handler to plan and execute political violence.
He had his own agenda. So after Walker survives,
Oswald gets spooked. He thinks the police might
be on to him. So he packs up and moves the family
to New Orleans in April of 63. And this begins
what the source material calls the summer of
discontent. He tries to reinvent himself again.
He gets a job. Loses it. And then he decides
he's going to become a major pro -Castro activist.
He decides to open a New Orleans chapter of the
Fair Play for Cuba committee. Which sounds very
official, like a real organization. It was a
complete and total sham. He was the only member.
He wrote to the National FPCC headquarters in
New York, claiming he had a thriving chapter.
He printed his own flyers. He even signed membership
cards for his one -man chapter. A .J. Hedel is
the chapter president and Lee Oswald is a secretary.
He was role -playing an entire organization.
He was his own boss and his own employee. He
even hired people to help him hand out flyers,
right? Yes. He paid a couple of guys he found
at the local unemployment office to stand on
street corners with him and distribute his pro
-Castro literature. And that is what led to the
street corner confrontation with Carlos Brigné.
And Brigné was a prominent anti -Castro Cuban
exile. That's right. And what's wild is that
Oswald had actually approached Brignier days
earlier, pretending to be anti Castro himself,
trying to infiltrate the exile groups. So when
Brignier saw this same guy on the street handing
out hands off Cuba flyers, he went ballistic.
They got into a scuffle. The police were called.
And Oswald got arrested for disturbing the peace.
But he didn't seem upset about it at all. He
seemed to enjoy it. This was the attention he
craved. He immediately requested to be interviewed
by the FBI. And then he managed to get himself
invited onto a local radio station, WDSU, for
a debate about Cuba. This is one of the only
times we can actually hear his voice. We have
the recording. Yeah. And he sounds calm. He sounds
surprisingly articulate. He's using all the Marxist
buzzwords he's read in his books. And you can
just hear the satisfaction in his voice. For
those 20 minutes, he was the center of attention.
He was the important man he always wanted to
be. But the radio debate didn't spark a revolution
in New Orleans. No. It barely made a ripple.
Dallas ignored him. New Orleans ignored him.
So he decided he had to aim higher. He decided
he needed to go to Cuba and fight for the revolution
personally. This is the Mexico City trip. September
1963, just two months before the assassination.
He takes a bus from Houston to Laredo, crosses
the border, and takes another long bus ride down
to Mexico City. He walks into the Cuban consulate
and demands a transit visa that will let him
travel to the Soviet Union by way of Cuba. And
he brings a whole dossier of his activities,
right? The flyers, the newspaper clippings about
his arrest, his fake membership cards. He lays
it all out on the desk like it's a resume. Look
at me, look at my credentials. I am a soldier
for the cause. And the Cubans are not impressed.
It was a spectacular disaster. The consulate
officials found him volatile, arrogant, and just.
Strange. They called the Soviet embassy to check
on his story, and the Soviets said, this kind
of visa usually takes four months to process.
Oswald started shouting. He got into a screaming
match with the consul, a man named Eusebio Askew.
And Askew actually told him off, didn't he? The
same as Lyons. Askew told him, quote, a person
like you is doing harm to the Cuban revolution.
He essentially told him he was a liability, a
nut, and he kicked him out. That has to be the
final nail in the coffin for his ego. He is rejected
by the U .S. Marines, rejected by the Soviet
Union, rejected by the anti -communist Russians
in Dallas, and now, finally, rejected by Castro's
Cuba, the very people he's championing. He returns
to Dallas in early October 1963 as a man with
absolutely no options left. Yeah. He is broke.
His wife is pregnant with her second child and
is living with a Quaker friend, Ruth Payne, because
she can't stand living with him anymore. He is
completely, totally alone. And he needs a job,
any job. And Ruth Payne hears about an opening
at a warehouse through a neighbor. The Texas
School Book Depository. He starts work there
on October 16th for a dollar and a quarter an
hour filling book orders. It's just so mundane.
He's just a guy filling orders in a warehouse.
And then history aligns. The universe puts the
pieces on the board. When did he find out the
presidential motorcade was going to be passing
right by his building? The full motorcade route
was published in the Dallas newspapers on Tuesday,
November 19th. Oswald would have seen that the
president's car was scheduled to make a slow
turn directly in front of his workplace. So he
had roughly three days to process this information
and form a plan. Yes. And on Thursday, November
21st, he breaks his routine. Normally, he stayed
in a rooming house in Dallas during the week
and would go to Ruth Payne's house in Irving
to see his family on Friday nights. But that
Thursday, he asked a co -worker, Wesley Frazier,
for a lift out to Irving. Did Frazier ask him
why he was going home on a Thursday? He did.
Oswald said he needed to pick up some curtain
rods to put up in his room. Curtain rods. Yeah.
Probably the most famous lie in American history.
The next morning, Friday the 22nd, Oswald gets
in Frazier's car for the ride to work. He puts
a long, bulky brown paper package in the back
seat. Frazier asks him what it is. Oswald says
curtain rods. Frazier later testified that Oswald
was incredibly quiet during that drive into work.
Just silent. Barely spoke a word. Walked ahead
of Frazier into the building. And he left something
important behind in Irving that morning. Two
things. Yeah. He left his wedding ring in a little
cup on the dresser. And he left $170 in cash.
Basically, his life savings from Marina. He did
not expect to come back. So he's at work. He
goes up to the sixth floor. He spends part of
the morning building a sniper's nest, moving
boxes of books around to create a screen to shield
him from view from the rest of the floor. There
were other employees on that floor earlier in
the morning, but they all went down for lunch
around 11 .45. Oswald told a co -worker he was
going to stay up there and eat. He stayed behind,
alone. 12 .30 p .m. The shots ring out. Now,
we are not going to dissect the ballistics here,
but I want to focus on what happens in the immediate
aftermath, because this, to me, speaks directly
to that schizoid diagnosis from all those years
ago. The chaos in Dealey Plaza is absolute. People
screaming, sirens wailing. Marion Baker, a motorcycle
cop, runs into the depository building immediately.
He runs up the stairs with the building superintendent,
Roy Truly. On the second floor, in the lunchroom,
they spot Oswald. And this is maybe 90 seconds
after the president's head was blown off six
floors above. Baker points his revolver directly
at Oswald. Oswald doesn't flinch. He doesn't
panic. He doesn't look surprised. He is standing
calmly at the vending machine, drinking a Coca
-Cola. Drinking a Coke. He wasn't out of breath
from running down four flights of stairs. He
wasn't shaking. He was just there. Baker asks,
Truly, do you know this man? Truly says, yes,
he works here. So Baker lowers his gun, says
okay, and continues up the stairs looking for
a shooter. Oswald was let go. That level of calm
is just chilling. It's almost reptilian. It's
like a switch has been flipped. It suggests a
complete and total dissociation from the act.
He had just committed the crime of the century,
and he was taking a soda break. And he just walks
out the front door in the confusion. Walks right
out. He walks about seven blocks east. He gets
on a city bus, but the traffic is gridlocked
because of the assassination. So he gets off
the bus. asks the driver for a transfer ticket,
and then grabs a taxi. He takes the taxi to his
rooming house in Oak Cliff. His housekeeper,
Earlene Roberts, sees him rush in. He goes to
his room, grabs a light -colored jacket and his
.38 revolver. He rushes back out without a word.
She sees him standing at the bus stop for a moment,
and then he just starts walking away. He seems
to be drifting. He doesn't have a clear escape
plan anymore. The curtain rods plan only got
him as far as the shooting. Now he's just improvising.
He's walking through the Oak Cliff neighborhood.
It's about 1 .1 p .m. p .m. now. Officer J .D.
Tippett is patrolling the area in his squad car.
He gets the radio broadcast with a description
of the suspect based on Howard Brennan's sighting
from the depository window. White male, roughly
30, 5 '10", slender. Oswald fits the description.
Tippett pulls his squad car over to check him
out. Tippett gets out of the car. He doesn't
have his gun drawn. He's just walking around
the hood of his car toward Oswald. And Oswald
doesn't wait to talk. He doesn't try to run.
He just draws his revolver and fires four shots
across the hood of the car. Tippett was hit multiple
times and went down immediately. He didn't stand
a chance. This is the moment that, for me, completely
destroys the Patsy argument. If Oswald is an
innocent man who has been framed for the crime
of the century, why does he execute a police
officer in broad daylight 45 minutes later? It
is the action of a desperate man who has nothing
left to lose. He shoots Tippett. Then, according
to witnesses, he walks over and fires another
shot into Tippett's head to make sure he's dead.
Then he turns and runs. Multiple witnesses see
him emptying the spent shells from the revolver
and reloading as he runs down the street. He
ducks into the entryway of a shoe store for a
second to hide as police sirens get closer. Then
he sees the Texas theater up the block. The ticket
booth lady, Julia Postal, sees him slip past
the entrance and go into the theater without
paying. The shoe store manager, who saw him hiding,
follows him and points him out. They call the
police. And the movie playing was war as hell.
You really, you just can't make this stuff up.
The house lights go up in the theater. The police
swarm in. Officer Nick McDonald approaches Oswald,
who is sitting alone in the back row. Does Oswald
surrender peacefully? He says, well, it's all
over now. But as McDonald goes to search him,
he punches McDonald in the face and draws the
gun. He pulls the trigger. He tried to kill another
cop. He did. But the hammer of the revolver came
down on the webbing of Officer McDonald's hand,
which was between the hammer and the firing pin.
It didn't fire. They wrestled him to the ground.
And as they dragged him out, Oswald started shouting,
I am not resisting arrest. I am a victim of police
brutality. The switch is flipped again. The hunter
of fascists who just murdered two people is gone
and the victim is back. Exactly. By the time
he gets to the police station. He is fully in
character as the innocent, confused working man
who's been caught up in something he doesn't
understand. Let's talk about the interrogation.
Because he held out for two days, he gave them
nothing. He was incredibly arrogant. He sparred
with the detectives. When they showed him the
infamous backyard photo with the rifle, he laughed
and said it was a fake, that they had superimposed
his head on someone else's body, which forensic
science later proved was a lie. And then there's
the Patsy line, the line that launched a thousand
theories. As he was being paraded before the
press, he shouted, They've taken me in because
I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy.
It was a brilliant line. It was short, it was
memorable, and it immediately fed into the paranoia
that this was some kind of big Cold War plot.
But notice what he admits to. Absolutely nothing.
He denies owning the rifle. He denies the curtain
rod story. He changes it to say he brought his
lunch to work. But he did get caught on one tiny
contradiction. When they asked him about his
politics, he very pointedly corrected the officers.
I am not a communist, he said. I am a Marxist.
Even while facing the electric chair for assassinating
the president, it was important to him that they
got his ideology right. And then Sunday morning,
November 24th. They're trying to move him from
the city jail to the more secure county jail.
Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner with a savior
complex and loose mob ties, steps out of the
crowd of reporters in the basement garage. One
shot, point blank to the abdomen. Live on national
television. Millions of people saw it happen.
Oswald groans and collapses. The great man who
craved a place in history dies on a concrete
floor in a police station basement. And it effectively
sealed the case in amber. Because there was no
trial. There was no public presentation of evidence.
There was no closure. It created the vacuum that
all the conspiracy theories rushed in to fill.
And they've been filling it ever since. I want
to touch on one last thing from the notes because
this story just keeps getting weirder even after
he's dead. The coffin. Ah, the coffin controversy.
Yes. In 1981, a British author published a book
claiming that the man buried in Oswald's grave
wasn't Oswald at all, but a Soviet spy imposter
who had taken his place years earlier. And Oswald's
widow, Marina, actually supported an exhumation.
She did. She wanted to put the rumors to rest.
So in October 1981, they dug him up. Robert Oswald.
Lee's brother was there. They opened the casket
and the body was in a poor state, but they were
able to use the skull to check his dental records
against his marine records. It was Lee. The dental
records matched perfectly. The imposter theory
was dead. But the coffin itself, that became
a whole other story. The original pine coffin
was badly water damaged and was falling apart.
So they transferred Oswald's body to a new one
and reburied him. But the funeral home that handled
the exhumation kept the old, rotting coffin.
Why on earth would they do that? To sell it.
Years later, they put it up for auction, and
it sold for over $87 ,000. That is just unbelievably
macabre. Robert Oswald sued them. He was furious
that they were trying to profiteer off his brother's
misery and infamy. A judge eventually agreed
and ordered the coffin returned to the family.
It was presumably destroyed. It really highlights
how radioactive this man's legacy is. Even his
garbage is worth a fortune. He achieved his goal,
in a way. He wanted to be immortal. He wanted
the world to study him, to analyze him and talk
about him. And we are. So why don't we pull back
and look at the whole picture. The lonely kid
in the Bronx with fantasies of power, the failed
Marine, the failed defector, the failed husband,
the failed revolutionary. What do you see? I
see a man who was desperate for significance.
He tried to find it in the Marines and failed.
He tried to find it in the Soviet Union and failed.
He tried to find it by killing General Walker
and he failed. He was a collector of failures.
But on November 22nd, 1963, he didn't fail. History
presented him with a target of opportunity. The
ultimate target. He had the rifle, he had the
perfect vantage point from that window, and he
had a lifetime of rage and resentment built up
inside him. He didn't need a conspiracy, he just
needed to be lucky once. It leaves me thinking
about that moment in Mexico City, just a few
weeks before, when the Cuban official, Eusebio
Askew, yelled at him and kicked him out of the
consulate. That's the hinge point. If Askew had
just been in a better mood that day... If he
had stamped that visa and said yes, Oswald would
have been on a boat to Havana in November 1963.
And John F. Kennedy would almost certainly have
finished his term. The Vietnam War might have
looked completely different. The Civil Rights
Movement might have played out differently. An
entire timeline of history changes. The margins
are just terrifyingly thin. The fate of the world
was determined by a bureaucrat's bad mood and
a $20 mail order rifle. That, I think, is the
scariest thought of all. We're going to leave
it there. Thank you for joining us on this deep
dive. It's a heavy one, but I feel like I finally
maybe understand the ghost in the machine a little
better. Always the human element, isn't it? That's
what explains the unexplained. Thanks for listening.
We'll catch you in the next deep dive.