Who is Lee Harvey Oswald?

Who is Lee Harvey Oswald? He is number 2 on the Top 10 criminal assassins list in on of our Top 10 countdown lists.

Background

Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed President John F. Kennedy, is one of the most infamous figures in American history.

Born in New Orleans in 1939, he had a troubled childhood and a complex personality.

Before the assassination, he lived a peripatetic life that took him from Texas to the Soviet Union and back. His motives for the crime remain a subject of intense speculation and debate.

List of interesting facts about Lee Harvey Oswald:

1. Oswald’s father died two months before he was born, and his mother remarried several times.
2. He was a troubled and truant youth who was placed in a juvenile detention center.
3. At age 17, he joined the Marines, where he qualified as a sharpshooter.
4. While stationed in Japan, he attempted suicide after being disciplined for unauthorized possession of a firearm.
5. In 1959, he defected to the Soviet Union and was given a menial job in Minsk.
6. He married a Russian woman named Marina and had two daughters with her.
7. In 1962, Oswald returned to the U.S. with his family, and tried to find work in various cities.
8. In the fall of 1963, he secured a job at the Texas School Book Depository, where he worked on the sixth floor.
9. On November 22, 1963, Oswald allegedly shot President Kennedy from that same sixth floor window.
10. Two days later, while being transferred from a Dallas police station, he was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Conclusion

Lee Harvey Oswald’s brief and tumultuous life ended in infamy when he killed President Kennedy. Despite the many investigations, books, and movies that have been produced about him, he remains a puzzle to historians and criminologists. Was he a lone gunman or part of a conspiracy? Was he a true believer or a deluded misfit? The answers to these questions may never be fully resolved, but Oswald’s name will forever be associated with one of the most traumatic events in modern American history.

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