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America's Cursed Royal Family | The Dark History of The Kennedys
Bailey Sarian's 59-minute breakdown, the fullest single telling on file.
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On Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, alongside his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie. As the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository, multiple shots were fired. Kennedy was struck in the upper back, with the bullet exiting his throat, and shortly afterward was struck fatally in the head. Governor Connally was also wounded but survived. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., roughly 30 minutes after the shooting.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine working at the Texas School Book Depository, was identified by investigators as the shooter. After the assassination, Oswald left the building, returned to his rooming house for a pistol, and shortly afterward, according to the Warren Commission, shot and killed Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. Oswald was apprehended by Dallas police approximately 70 minutes after the shooting of Kennedy and was charged under Texas state law with the murders of both Kennedy and Tippit. Two days later, on November 24, while being transferred through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters on live television, Oswald was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald died at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same facility where Kennedy had been treated.
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field about two hours after the shooting. Jack Ruby was subsequently convicted of murdering Oswald, but the conviction was overturned on appeal; Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial, of a pulmonary embolism secondary to cancer.
A 10-month investigation by the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy and that there was no evidence either Oswald or Ruby participated in a conspiracy. In 1967, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison brought the only criminal trial connected to Kennedy's murder, charging businessman Clay Shaw with conspiracy; a jury acquitted Shaw in 1969. Later federal reviews, including the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, largely affirmed the Warren Commission's core findings. In 1979, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded there was a "high probability" that two gunmen had fired at the president and that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy," though it did not identify any alleged co-conspirators. The HSCA's acoustic-based conclusion was later found to rest on a police Dictabelt recording that has since been discredited by the U.S. Justice Department.
The assassination remains one of the most extensively investigated crimes in American history, having generated an extensive public record, numerous government inquiries, and widespread ongoing public debate about whether Oswald acted alone.
