April 28, 2018 • 45 mins
For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Josh and Chuck delve into the killing, the investigations and the conspiracy theories to get to the bottom of an enduring national question.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. Hey everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode,
Who Killed JFK. It's from November two thousand thirteen, and
it's a doozy. I hope you enjoy listen now. M
(00:21):
welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and very appropriately for this one,
we have our buddy Matt, who's guest producing because he
(00:43):
knows how to do that kind of thing in addition
to his awesome show stuff they don't want you to know,
which he does with our other friend Ben. And uh
it's it covers conspiracy theories. And we are podcasting on
Who Killed JFK the day before the anniversary of that
Fateful Day anniversary, right fiftieth anniversary, November ninety three in Dallas.
(01:07):
And so you made a joke that Matt was just
going to be over there the whole time, going yeah, really,
uh huh, yeah, it wasn't a mob. Yeah, three tramps whatever.
I like the three trans one. It's it's ridiculous, but
it's my favorite one. Yeah, I got some good stuff
on that. Um. In two thousand three, josh An ABC
(01:27):
News poll came out ten years ago, seventy of Americans
believe the assassination of John F. Kennedy was part of
a broader plot. What percentage believe that and believed that
Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Well, so it's the thing,
it's it will not die. No, it won't. It never will,
I don't think. Well, it's very much entrenched in popular
(01:49):
culture as well to like even it's become a parody
of itself as well. Yeah, and it's just the idea
that there's this outstanding question that will never be put
to rest. Yeah, Like Lone Gunmen and Grassy Knoll, like
all these are almost like buzz terms. Now. Yeah, the
Lone Gunmen, they made an appearance in the X Files,
(02:11):
they were recurring characters. Trio of guys, The Misfits had
probably the best song about the jfk assassination out there. Um,
magic Bullet, But there's a band called Magic Bullets. There's
all sorts of stuff. Um, So let's get into this
because I think our colleague Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff
(02:33):
did a really good job of like handling what could
have easily been like a fifty page quagmire. And he
basically says, like, here's all the facts, and this is
why the what's on the surface is probably the likeliest
thing to happen. Yeah, and happened. We should see you
a little bit here. There are hundreds of books written
(02:56):
about various conspiracies, uh, conspirat c theories on the JFK assassination,
and we are we don't have like eighteen episodes to
dedicate to this, so this will be a skimming of
the topic. UM. I don't want anyone to be like, oh,
Josh and Chuck are gonna get down to the bottom
of this, like people, that's some people's life's work, you know,
(03:18):
dedicated to this. Yeah. I mean, if we're anything, we're dilettants.
That's right. Every week we go from one subject to
the next. That is true. So I guess let's begin
at the beginning, just to get it all out on
the table. Okay, all right, okay, so Chuck Yes. On
November eighth, nine sixty three, UM, the Secret Service found
(03:41):
the proposed route for the president presidential Murdorcaide's visit to
Dallas and there was a reason the President was coming
to Dallas. It was a very good reason. And um,
this is why he was in Texas. Why he was
trying to basically sort of unite the Democratic Party. Um.
(04:03):
He was meeting with with his vice president and uh,
the governor of Texas, and there was some bickering going
on within the party and he basically wanted to He's
trying to get reelected, is what he was doing. Right,
That was a big part of it. But it is true.
Governor Connolly UM and Senator Richard Yarborough were publicly feuding. UM,
and they're both Democrats, So basically their great father was
(04:26):
going to come and make peace with them among them
publicly tour the state of Texas to help him self
get reelected, but also to show Texas like, hey, the
Texas Democrats are all family. Here. Family fights sometimes, but
we're still all family and we still have the same
grand vision. I know, I'm a Catholic from New England,
but we're all the same. Be nine Texan. Uh so okay,
(04:50):
where are we? They found out the route from love
Field to umdely Plaza. They publicize that in the newspapers,
so everyone knew about it. Because you know people, they
wanted people to come out and wave, yeah, like they did.
On November nine, the route was published in the papers
and lived on eight published one yes. And then on
(05:13):
November twenty two, nineteen sixty three, that fateful day, Air
Force one lands at love Field. The President gets in
his presidential limousine and they start making their way toward
Deeley Plaza, along with Governor Connelly and his wife and
of course Jackie and then a couple of secret service dudes.
That's in the one car. In a car behind them
is lb J Senator Yarborough and some other secret service guys. Right,
(05:36):
that's right. So they're apparently as they were headed toward
Deely Plausa, they got delayed because um Kennedy stopped and
kind of soaked up the people waving and cheering and
all that and gave gave some back to him. Yeah,
And so they were a little bit delayed, um getting
to Daly Plaza. But when they did, at about twelve thirty,
(05:58):
as they were arriving in the presidential motorcade, a shot
writing out and then there was two more shots at
least Yeah, and uh with the second shot, they think
the president he threw his hands up to his neck
and Jackie leaned over to kind of like say, what's
(06:20):
going on? And then all of a sudden, the back
right side of the President's head blew off. Yes, it
is very graphic if you see the slowed down enhanced
zapruder film on YouTube today, very affecting too. It's really sad. Yeah,
it is terribly sad. And this was not even a
(06:42):
part of our generation. Like this kind of stuff still
makes people like our parents breakdown sometimes, you know. So
that was thirty Within about anywhere between four and eight seconds,
at least three shots were fired, one missed, probably the
second and third one hit the president first in the
back of the neck, exited his throat, and the third
one blew his head off. Yeah, let's talk about the
(07:05):
that magic bullet since we should go ahead and just
clear that up. Uh it hit I guess that this
is a second bullet that passed through his throat. It
went on to hit Governor Connelly in the back, but
in his armpit. Yeah, below the right armpit. Um exited
below the right nipple. Um then hit his wrist that
was in his lap, and then continued through the wrist
(07:26):
through his left thigh. And that's why they call it
the magic bullet. And if you've seen Oliver Stone's movie,
they kind of, you know, make fun of it in court,
like that is one magic bullet. That's where I got
the name. Back into the left, Back into the left.
Remember the Seinfeld thing, Yeah, with the spit with the
Keith her Nandez. Yeah. Um, but and I remember my
(07:48):
brother in law, the marine, explaining to me years ago
that bullets tumble and can do some really crazy things,
like he's seen it happen on firing ranges and and puts. Also,
this is a very very powerful bullet. It was a
six point five millimeter bullet, which is basically like a
little um how it's her shell. Yeah, it's huge and
(08:10):
it travels very quickly. Yeah, and um, they have done
test that, even though it seems unlikely, that show that
it is possible that a bullet can change directions and
do kind of crazy things once it starts hitting bone
and other things. Yeah. So um, that was, like you said,
the second bullet most likely. Um, within just a few
(08:30):
seconds after the first shot, Kennedy is lying there, um motionless.
Jackie's like reaching back across the trunk of the car
trying to get help from a Secret Service agent who
I believe jumps into the car. Yeah. Well, actually they
think that she was picked up part of his brain tissue. Okay,
(08:51):
I heard that before too. Yeah, I looked into that today,
but I was watching the Repruter film and it looks
it looked to me like she was reaching back like help.
But I've heard that with war as well. Well. Apparently
she was quoted um by I think Connolly's wife and
one other person at the time of saying he's dead
and look, I have I have his brain in my hand. Um.
(09:14):
She I read that her testimony for the Warran Commission
and she says she didn't even remember any of that.
But whether or not that's true, it's awful. And she
was trying to hold his head together on the way
to the hospital. Yeah. So in the car behind them, uh,
a Secret Service agent pounces on LBJ and like throws
him onto the seat and lays on top of him. Um.
(09:36):
I think his name is Rufus young Blood, the CIA
or the Secret Service agent. The motor kid just takes
off to the hospital park Memorial Parkland Parkland Memorial and
um again, the the motor kid inner Dally plos Ave thirty.
By one pm, the President has been pronounced dead at
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. It was just a few
(09:58):
miles away. Um, so that was one pm. That was
one pm. Um. I guess we should talk about the
Grassy Knoll real quick because a lot of people, um
have said, you know, a shot have There were a
lot of misleading and conflicting accounts, which is where a
lot of the trouble started. Eyewitnesses not collaborating stories. Uh.
(10:20):
The acoustics at Dealey Plaza were funky because of all
the buildings and it's three side buildings and then one
side like Grassy Knoll. Basically yeah, so like where did
the shot come from? I thought it came from over
here from the sounds, Um, it was basically pretty tough
to pinpoint. And the Grassy Knoll there was a police
officer named Clyde hey Good that there are pictures of him,
(10:41):
you know, running towards the Grassy Knoll and a lot
of folks thought, hey, he's running like towards a suspect,
when in fact he was running towards another police officer
to you know, say, hey, what should we do? I
guess so the I guess. The way it's been explained
away over the years is the the acoustics and the
fact that that cop was running towards the Grassy Knolls
(11:02):
made some people think that there was more than one
shooter and another shooter was on the Grassy knolls. The
official line is that that is not the case, though.
UM so one PM, the President's pronounced dead at two
thirty eight, UM Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, UH, Johnson's staff, pretty
much everybody was back on Air Force one and um
(11:25):
they called Bobby Kennedy to ask what to do and
to tell him what had happened, and Bobby Kennedy said,
you need to swear Johnson and before you guys leave
the ground. So they found a judge, brought her on board,
and she swore Johnson in as president, and then they
took off and flew back to Washington. Very famous photo, yeah,
with him being sworn in on board Air Force one,
(11:46):
right with Jackie's on NASA's or Jackie Kennedy's face. Just
like the fact that she was able to stand is
pretty amazing. Apparently they turned her in such a way
so that the blood stains were an apparent in a photograph. Man,
I don't know Ifill's air Force one yet. It was
that Look that wasn't okay? Um? All right? So where
(12:07):
are we? Uh? Four minutes after the shooting, Dallas police
uh looked at the Texas School Book Depository building and said, Hey,
that might have been where this came from. It's a
pretty prime location for a sniper. And there was an
eyewitness named Howard Brennan who saw a figure in the
window and gave a description which fit Lee Harvey Oswald.
(12:30):
So this this one dude actually saw him in the
window on the sixth floor. Pretty believable that you could
see someone from that range. The guy said, I knew
it was Oswald all along. So there was a cop
that was in the book depository within two minutes of
the shooting. Yeah, Marian Baker was kind of took the
initiative to go ahead and get in there. So we
went in there and he met up with the superintendent
(12:52):
of the building, a guy named Truly, and they started
um walking up the steps and at the second floor
they came upon Lee Harvey Oswald who was leaving. He
was leaving. Truly vouched for Oswald and Oswald was allowed
to leave. And the reason truly vouched for Oswald's because
just a couple of weeks before, about a month before,
Oswald had gotten a job at that book depository, so
(13:15):
he checked out as far as truly was concerned. The
officer who was with Truly said well, okay, and they
kept looking, and a few minutes after that lieutenant showed
up and took over the crime scene, and they started
scouring the building and on the sixth floor they found
the sniper's nest that's right with UM, three empty cartridges
and the gun UH telescopic rifle, UH telescopic site, and
(13:41):
a bolt action rifle. And it was pretty much a
no brainer at that point, or at least on the surface.
This is where it came from, right, So UM, after
Oswald left his uh left the book depository, he went
to um the place where he was running a room,
the house where he's running a room, and grabbed a pistol.
(14:01):
And as he's walking along and this is about the
same time that Kennedy's being pronounced dead, he's walking along
the street, he Um encountered a cop named J. D. Tippett,
and apparently Oswald just opened fire on this cop shot
him four times, killed him instantly. Yeah. Well, he was
investigating Oswald because the the ap B had already come
through with the description of Oswald, and he was like, well,
(14:25):
this guy fits that description. Let me talk to him.
And it didn't take long though, I don't think there
was much of a discussion before Oswald shot him and
killed him. And um, actually, when Oswald was finally apprehended,
it was for the murder of the cop. They they
didn't know he had anything to do with Kennedy at
the time. Yeah, yeah, at the time. Uh, he ducked
into a theater, the Texas Cedar, into the movie War
(14:48):
as Hell, and I think he snuck in and that's
why they called the cops because they're like, hey, someone
stuck in the theater. So if he would have had
a bought a ticket, he might not have ever been caught.
You never know. You know what's interesting about that, there's
all these parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination. Um,
some are untrue, some are just ridiculous. But one of
them was that John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln in a
(15:11):
theater and went and hit out in a warehouse and
Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy from a warehouse and went
and hit out in a theater where he was caught.
That's a pretty good one. I like that one. Um.
So he was apprehended in the theater and reportedly said, well,
it's all over now. But he also said something interesting
at one point to the media, I'm a patsy, which
(15:33):
has fueled speculation over the years that, uh, well, we'll
get into the different theories before we go any further.
Get this, the president of the United States of America
has just been shot in front of a crowd in Dallas.
That's right. That's huge. That's enormous. That's what's going on
(15:58):
right now. And there's a man hunt for this guy
who's just been caught for killing a cop. Yeah, so
people don't know that the president's killer has just been
caught as well. That's right. So this is a it's
a pretty emotional time. Uh, and let's talk about Oswald himself.
But first, um, let's do a message break and we'll
talk about Oswald when we come back. All right, So
(16:37):
here's a little bit about Lee Harvey Oswald. He was
a mixed up guy. Um, he was sort of an
outcast sort of didn't really fit in. He was born
in Um. His father died two months before he was born,
which I think, you know, probably has a lot to
do with emotional scarring later on and maybe being a
mixed up kid. Uh. He was in an orphanage for
(16:59):
a little while with an older brother and half brother,
but his mother was able to get him back out
of that orphanage uh and raised them by age five.
It was five when he got taken on the orphanage,
which was enough years to also do some damage psychologically.
I think that probably set the theme because I read
a little bit about what you know, contemporary reports of
(17:22):
him growing up concluded his problem was and that it was.
One social worker said that he believed his mother doesn't
give a damn about him so uh, and that somebody
else said that they've never met a kid more emotionally
starved than this guy. Uh. So I'm quite sure that
being left it in an orphanage, even being picked back
up after a while it was, probably did have a
(17:45):
pretty big effect on him on his development and how
he viewed his mother. Well. Yeah, and when you look
at what he did for the rest of his life, um,
it seems like he was always looking for a new
family quote unquote, um, whether it was the Marxist or
the Communists, or Cuba or Russia. Like it seems like
he never I mean, it's kind of a it's like
(18:06):
one o one. You know, he was looking to fit
in somehow somewhere with somebody. But at the same time,
it was always on the fringe of wherever he was at. Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like he's never happy with
where he was. He wanted to fit into whatever was
counter what he was doing or with the status quo
of where he was. Right. So at sixteen, he drops
(18:28):
out of school and tries to join the Marine Corps.
Um he was too young, so they said come back later.
He wrote the Socialist Party when he was Socialist Party
of America when he was seventeen, to say, hey, I'm
weigh into Marxism and like, can I come join her club?
I guess at the very least he sent me a
free button. Uh. And then at seventeen he reapplied to
(18:48):
the Marine Corps and he was old enough at that point,
and turns out he had quite an act for shooting guns.
He's a sharp shooter. During boot camp. But then during
the actual ranking testing only rated as a marksman, which
is still really good. Yeah, just below sharp shoot sharp
shooter the highest or is that dead eyes the highest level?
(19:09):
I think sharp shooters eyes. But at the same time,
even while he was a marine, a Marine marksman, he
um he taught himself Russian. He studied about the Soviet
Union and communism. And this is during the Cold War.
This is like during the most paranoid finger pointing part
of the Cold War. But Oswald's in the Marines, like
(19:29):
teaching himself Russian and everything. To you what I mean,
like a confused guy. Yeah, but even still like it's
just it's so strange to me learning about his experience
that he was relatively left alone while expressing pretty publicly
this interest in the Soviet Union and communism during the
peak of the Cold War. It's just I thought, if
(19:52):
you had, if you even wore the color red, people
like communists get him. But apparently you could just hide
in plain sight or admire the Soviet Union plain sighte Well,
he eventually would find himself on a watch list because
he went to Russia. Um Under um he obtained a
passport falsely with an application to a college in Switzerland
(20:13):
and applied, got to Moscow, applied for citizenship there and
they were like yet, and so he he goes, oh, yeah,
if you know what I mean, and I'm gonna kill myself.
He basically did the same day he was rejected by Russia.
He split his wrist and the warmhearted Soviets were like, well, okay,
you can stay, young man. I thought that was interesting. Yeah,
(20:33):
that's what allowed him to stay. Yeah, yeah, that's just weird.
Yeah it is, so he said, I don't want to
be Um. Well, he he did not officially announce his
citizenship in America, although he expressed interest in doing so. Yeah,
he kind of mouthed off about it, but never actually
did it. That's right. Uh. In Russia, he fell in
(20:56):
love with a lady named Marina Prusakova and and you're
not going to try her middle name nicola Venna nice Nikolaevna. Yeah,
I think that's right. And um, basically he was like,
you know, we should probably go back to the United
States because it turns out Russia sucks. These breadlines. I
weren't expecting them to be so long. Yeah, it said
(21:18):
he'd become disenchanted. I think that's a nice way of
saying that Russia sucked. Right, So he says, Hey, I
know a place where you're gonna love. It's called Texas.
Let's move back there. Uh, just forget the fact that
you don't speak any English, you don't know anybody in Texas.
Everybody back in America thinks I'm a weirdo and I'm
your husband. Uh, just let's go and move to Texas.
(21:41):
And she's like, she said, what did you say in Russian?
He's like, nothing in Russian. And so they moved to
Texas and uh, she apparently very quickly became just she
felt isolated, she didn't have any friends, and a woman
named Ruth Payne um felt bad for and took her
under her wing and they became kind of friends. And
(22:01):
Ruth Paine will come into play a little later on. Yeah,
and this is where he was finally sort of um
on the radar of the FBI. Yeah, when he moved back. Yeah,
you can't move to Russia and then come back. And
they just you know, don't even bother talking to you know,
but they did talk to him and they said, okay,
well listen, if if the USSR gets in touch with
(22:21):
you and want you to do sp N just let
us know, and he went, sure, okay, and they're like,
all right, we'll have a great day. Thanks for the coffee, ma'am.
She's like, what did you say in Russian? That's pretty remarkable.
So on April tenth nine, Um, another interesting thing happened.
A few days after losing his job. He tried to
assassinate Major General Edwin Walker. This guy was a piece
(22:44):
of work himself. Yeah, he was a hardcore right wing conservative,
possibly gay man. Oh I hadn't heard that. Yeah. Later
in life, in the seventies, he was arrested twice for
fondling men in public. I wonder if he was the
model for um, the dad in American Beauty. Oh, maybe
(23:07):
I could see that then. Yeah, I mean he never married,
and they I don't think they ever came right out
and said he was gay. But he was arrested twice
for fondling police officers. Well, Alan Ball, if if that's
the case, email and let us know, okay, Yeah, which
is neither here nor there, but it's interesting. No, But
he he was, like you said, extreme, a right wing
extremist in the very definition of the word. He was very, um,
(23:29):
well respected, decorated military leader, like he was commanding all
of the troops in West Germany at one point when
he was no he hated the Kennedy's. He called Harry
Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt pink, which means that they were
communists sympathizers, which is a big deal. He was temporarily
relieved of his post while he was investigated for that,
(23:52):
and he said, you know what, I'm not even gonna
I'm not going back because the US has given up
his sovereignty to the United Nations and I can't fight
for it any longer. And this guy was so convinced
by his own convictions that he refused a military pension
for years afterwards because he didn't want to have anything
(24:12):
to do with him. Well, apparently he refused it, but
then kind of quietly tried to get it. Well, then
they gave it to him. Yeah um, But then he
was celebrated as a great soldier later on in life
and after his death. Oh yeah. So another example though
of Oswald is sort of a confused guy, like he
tries to assassinate this right wing conservative general. He also
(24:33):
was a marine. He also killed Kennedy. He was just
sort of like it didn't seem like he knew what
he believed. Well, he believed that Um was the general's name.
Walker was like Hitler in the making. Yeah, basically that
he was an extremist who needed to be taken up.
But he missed. Yeah, from about a hundred feet away.
He shot into his dining room from the street where
(24:57):
he was sitting at a desk and hit the window
pane and uh it, you know, made the bullet go
a different directions, So he missed. So Lee Harvey Oswald's
basically doing anything he can to insinuate himself in international
global politics. Yeah, but he got away with it like
they never It was a cold case until they finally
caught him and put the You know, I think his
(25:18):
wife was the one who's who fingered him later on, Yeah,
because he comes home and says, Hey, we're moving to
New Orleans and she's like, what did you just say?
And so they moved to New Orleans and Um while
they're there, she's like, I've had enough, you're shooting at
UM public figures. Now we're moving from Texas to New Orleans.
(25:41):
I'm moving back And she moved in with her friend
Ruth Payne, and that surely had an effect and impact
on Oswald. There's no way it couldn't because he already
had abandonment issues from his mother. Now his wife leaves
him because he's just crazy, and he's like, well, you
know what, fine, I'm gonna stay here and I'm going
(26:03):
to start a chapter of a pro Cuba pro Castro
sympathizer club, and I'm going to be the one and
only member. But I'm gonna be a loudmouth member. Well
I think he wanted more than one member. But it
was another example of like nobody was interested in this guy. Nobody.
Russia didn't want him. No one joined his club, his
wife left him, Cuba didn't want him. No. He went
(26:24):
down to Mexico and visited the Cuban and Russian embassies,
trying to basically get in them with them, and they
were like, no, that's okay, thanks man. Yeah, like nobody was.
I think the words strictly used was no one was
ever very impressed with Oswald. They were unimpressed. So yet
in Cuban officials, I mean, if this guy was a Patsy,
(26:45):
he was the perfect Patsy. Oh yeah. But you can
also take all of this evidence and say well this
is what made him do this. Yeah, if he was
a patsy, you imagine how easy it would have been
for like one of the theories is the mafia, for
them to put their arm around and be like, you're
you're pretty great guy, right, you know what you should do?
You should kill the president. Yeah. Yeah, he would have
(27:06):
been very easy to manipulate. I imagine because he's also
just twenty four. It when he was a kid, which
is crazy. Um so he uh, he left New Orleans,
went back to Dallas, got a job, and about a
month later at the school book Depository, uh, shot and
killed John F. Kennedy. Yes, so, um Oswald's done his shooting.
(27:30):
He's caught. They started to investigate his background and Lyndon
Johnson ordered a um an investigation, a full investigation into
the Kennedy assassination. What happened? Lessons learned all that stuff?
And this commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren UH
was called the Warren Commission and the report. They compiled
(27:53):
several hundred page reports called the Warren Report, And in
addition to the several hundred page report, they also released
twenty six volumes of transcripts of the hearings that they conducted.
So it's this exhaustive investigation that was very transparent. Supposedly,
there's so many documents that to to try to censor them,
(28:14):
really censor them, it would be virtually impossible. So a
lot of people point to the very fact that the
warr report is so voluminous that it is like in
fact correct and it's not part of a larger cover
up at least. Yeah, and I've sent you the article.
Did you read the one from the New York Times
that some people think they're still documents the CIA won't release. Well,
(28:36):
they won't. Well, but the one anti conspiracy guy that
they interviewed said, people that I don't know how the
CIA works that believe this stuff. He went, there would
be no documents, period. They wouldn't be hiding things, they
wouldn't exist Operation Killed President Kennedy. Yeah, I mean he's
sort of like a little pad on the head, like
you think there are documents, you sweet little conspiracy theorists. Um,
(28:59):
all right, So the Warrant Commission comes out, and immediately
conspiracy theorists start to suggest different things, like one theory
was that it was an outside job by the KGB
and or Cuba, right, we should say the Warrant Commission
concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy on his
own volution, by himself, um, without acting at the behester
(29:24):
the benefit of anybody else, just a lone, singular, crazed gunman.
So the conspiracy theories are everybody else saying no, that's
not the case. And we gave the example of the
Grassy Knoll, the acoustics and daily plause of the fact
that a cop was running towards the Grassy Knoll and
conflicting eyewitness accounts, Like from the literal beginning of this event.
(29:49):
In history, there have been all sorts of hey that
people have been able to make conspiracy theories out of,
Like there's been no shortage of all sorts of different
weird things that you can start to piece together with
other things and come up with these very interesting, some
um sound conspiracy theories, but that when you really get
(30:11):
down to them, they're not supported by evidence exactly. I'm
glad you said that, Uh, the KGB or Cuba theory
that maybe their governments were acting out and trying to
kill Kennedy had some legs because the Bay of Pigs
had just happened. They were certainly no friends of Kennedy
at the height of the Cold War. There was definitely
a motive there, but Um, there was no evidence to
(30:32):
tie Oswald in any substantive way to either of these countries. No,
they looked at his finances over They went back a
year and a half and looked at his finances to
see if there were any weird payments or whatever. And
apparently the only amount total that they could have they
couldn't account for came to like a hundred and sixty dollars.
(30:53):
It could have been cash and diamonds, though I guess
it could have Been's how they like the deal. One
of the other popular theories I mentioned was the mob
and that Jack Ruby was working with the mob and
the second Oswald said, I'm a patsy. They're like, we
need to go take care of this, like right now. Yeah,
we haven't mentioned Jack Ruby. Two days after Um Kennedy
was killed, Um, they were transporting Lee Harvey Oswald and
(31:18):
a guy named Jack Ruby, who was a Dallas nightclub owner,
came up and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the chest
and killed him. Lee Harvey Oswald actually died in Parkland
memorial the same hospital that Kennedy had two days before. Yeah,
a very famous photo which has since been made into
very funny photo. Have you seen the band one? No,
you never saw that. It was big years ago. It was,
(31:40):
you know, the photo of Ruby killing Kennedy, and someone
went in and photoshopped in musical instruments because they're all
like have different, you know, pained expressions. And Jack Ruby's
at the keys, and I think Lee Harvey Oswald has
a guitar and it looks like it's pretty funny. Check
it out. How about another moment here for a message
break June. All right, let's get back to it. So
(32:18):
we were talking about the mafia um because Jack Ruby
owned a nightclub. Everybody's just like, well, he's went down
with the mob. What's more, Lee Harvey Oswald probably was
acting on behalf of the mob because he had an
uncle in New Orleans who was mafia connected. Mobbed up
as they say, they Yeah, but um, apparently there's no
(32:39):
evidence that Oswald and his uncle communicated at all, and
the these connections are fairly uh tenuous at best. Jack
Ruby himself said that the reason he did it was
because he wanted to spare Jacqueline and Caroline the heartper
(33:00):
of having to come back to Dallas to testify against
Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh really, that's what he officially said,
And apparently there's a transcript of and it is just hearsay,
but it's um Oswald talking with his lawyer saying that, um,
he's saying, like this whole charade we're doing. That he
(33:22):
that he shot Oswald while he was blacked out, and
he he can't be held responsible. That it's all just
it's just just stupid, and they should go with the
truth that you know, he did this because he wanted
to spare Jackie. Interesting, that's supposedly it. But then apparently
also he's supposedly he said that that was a charade
as well, So who knows. Well. Another theory is that
(33:44):
it was the CIA and it was an inside job.
Kennedy had criticized their practices and um was, you know,
trying to scale down Vietnam, and those weren't very popular
things to do at the time if you were in
the government, and so lot of people say, you know what,
Lennon Johnson might have orchestrated this whole thing, and it
was an inside job with the c I a there
(34:06):
like he barely ever wore pants for God's sake. Uh.
I don't know if this remained true to her death,
but both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy at one point
I believe that quote he was felled by domestic opponents. Um.
And of course Bobby died not too long after five years.
(34:29):
But UM, I don't know if Jackie held that opinion
her entire life. I'm not sure about that. I'm curious,
but it seems to ring a bell that like she
was suspicious of lb J. Yeah. UM, I know. Since
two thousand, there have been five legit tenured historians that
have published studies. In four or the five concluded that
there was probably some larger conspiracy at work, but none
(34:50):
of them agreed on what it was, so it's hard
to get a consensus. So ultimately, what the what it
came down to the official line was that there were Um,
there was a rifle that had Oswald's fingerprints on it
that was found at the crime scene. That there is
a picture in existence that of Oswald holding that exact
(35:11):
same rifle before the crime was committed. Um, he had
already tried to kill a general. Yeah, and the fact
that he said, well it's all over now when he
was apprehended and take all this together everybody who A
lot of people think it was Oswald. That's the official line, right. Yeah.
And the Zuppruter film has been used to that. You know, hey,
(35:34):
how can you shoot someone from this direction and the
head go that direction? Um. There were other films of
the incident, but the Supruter is the most complete. UM.
I did look at some of the others. I've never
seen any of those before. It's weird to see it
from different angles. Yeah, if you're used to seeing just
the Zapruder film. UM. So the Warrant Commission did not
(35:55):
put this issue to bed at all, even back then. Uh.
The there was another commission that took place in the
nineteen seventies six, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and
they investigated both JFK and Martin Luther King's assassinations. And
this is a group of UM House representatives who, you know,
(36:20):
it's true, are known for being the rabble rousers of
the government, that branch of government. UM. But they basically
investigated this, carried out a full investigation and found that
you know, what we actually think that JFK did die
as a result of a conspiracy. We don't think it
was the mob, we don't think it was the c
i A, we don't think it was the FBI, and
(36:40):
we don't think it was the Cubans. But we do
believe that it was a conspiracy and that um Lee
Harvey Oswell did not act alone. This is the House
of Representatives saying that, Yeah, well, they initially said that
there were four shots, but they were actually wrong. And
then later we can did that um with acoustic evidence
and said, you know what, we were wrong on that,
(37:02):
and they did never find any like hard evidence. But
was there did they remain true to that statement? Yeah,
that were never their final report in yeah, um, yeah,
that it was part of a conspiracy. So that definitely
didn't quell any No. And as a matter of fact,
it's like, oh, well, the House of Representatives just said
Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy, like if
(37:24):
if it was dying down before it flared right back up.
And there was another one almost at the same time,
a Rockefeller Commission by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. And a
lot of people think that the Rockefeller Commission was basically
just like a fact finding committee that was there to
basically cover up in um derail any other investigations. Yeah,
(37:45):
kind of like, we got this, we got this. You know.
It didn't work though, because of the House Select Committee. Well,
they invalidated one of our favorite little parts of the theory,
the three tramps theory. Um. At the time, there were
these three vagrants that were detained by police that had
been traveling by box cars supposedly, and um, that's how
(38:08):
they travel often, that is how they travel. And two
of the men for a while, we're believed to have
been E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, who were the
dudes who broke into Watergate, which would be a nice
little coincidence. Yeah. Well there's a whole side by side
photographic comparison of the tune. I mean it looks a
lot like well it does. Um, the FBI got experts
(38:31):
to do the same thing though that said, no, that
it's not them and the third guy. And if you're
a conspiracy theorists, you're like, oh, okay, well thanks, FBI,
appreciate that. I believe you. Um. The third guy was
rumored to be Woody Harrelson's dad, Charles Harrison. He was
a hitman, and he they were estranged by the way,
(38:53):
Woody Harrelson is not like he doesn't talk about this much.
It's not one of his favorite topics. Sorry, I know
we gotta talk about it. But um, he he killed
a federal judge. And then when he was caught in
a standoff of nineteen eighty high on cocaine, he said
I killed Kennedy too, and then later on recanted that
and said, I just said that because I was high
(39:15):
on cocaine. Yeah, and I was trying to elongate my life.
And like they I don't think they would have killed
me if they if I had information what it was.
That's what he said in a in an interview from prison.
But conspiracy theorists latched onto this and said he's the
third tramp. He was the youngest one of the three.
And the pictures kind of look alike, you know it
to Harrison's dad was one of a trio of men
(39:37):
who killed JFK. Well, all of this could have been
put to bed if the dudes look nothing like the
other guys, but they all kind of did. So another
thing to add fuel to the fire, for sure. And
we should say also there's um even more like you
were saying, the CIA still still will not declassify documents
that they have about the JFK assassination. That's not helping things.
(40:00):
Something did come to light though, from UM investigations into
the CIA. The a guy named George Joannity's he Um
was a CIA agent who was basically in charge of
a group of anti Cuban student dissidents right or anti
Castro Cuban student dissidents, and he was running their operation
(40:22):
in Miami and New Orleans. They actually beat up Lee
Harvey Oswald while he was in New Orleans handing out
pamphlets that were pro Cuban and pro Castro um like
a few months before the assassination. So George Joannity's ran
that operation and then later on in n when the
(40:43):
House Select Committee was investigating it again, he was the
liaison for the CIA, But no one told the How
Select Committee the involvement he'd had before. Interesting, Yeah, well, uh,
with what he's dad, he actually had a co conspiracor
that said, you know what, he confessed this before to
me and even drew maps about where he was hiding
(41:03):
the day it happened. Um. But in arrest records were released,
and that identified the three tramps as uh Gus Abrams,
Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. It was all sound like suspicious,
made up names. And they I think they interviewed a
couple of these guys later in life and they're like, yeah,
(41:24):
we were the guys, and we were just boxcar dudes,
even though we had suits on and we're clean shaven,
and oh well, everybody back then was like, even if
you were like just the total complete hobo, you still
wore a suit in Fedora usually. Uh So again people
(41:45):
point to that and say, these clearly weren't you know,
these guys were paid or you know. And then a
lot of other hanky things happened. People disappeared, witnesses disappeared. Um,
it's it's never going to die. I don't think. I
don't think anyone will ever at this go. But that's
that's what makes a great conspiracy theory, right. There's just
too many facts outstanding that just can't be put to bed.
(42:10):
So you got anything else, I got nothing else. If
you want to learn more about this, or if this
piqued your interest, you should definitely check out our buddies
over at stuff. They don't want you to know. They
have a huge, awesome body of work um that they
put together over the years and continue to do so. Uh.
And you can also read this article on how stuff
works dot com by typing JFK into the search bar
(42:32):
and see what comes up. And since I said search part,
it means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
this Chinese zombies from sam LaRussa. Hey, guys, don't know
if you're aware of this, but you have a bit
of a cult here in Wuhan, China. Awesome a whole
two people, my girlfriend and I still it's pretty great. Yeah.
We listen to you all the time and as you
(42:53):
tell us about stuff we should know. Um. We're both
English teachers, and outside of with each other, the Stuff
you Should Know podcast is just about the only English
speaking we get on a day to day basis. Um.
I have an incident though to write you about where
stuff you should know save my butt and it just
happened yesterday. Wu Hand schools have a three hour siesta
(43:14):
to avoid the hottest part of the day, and I
usually use the time to plan lessons or take a nap. Um.
Yesterday I decided to forego planning lessons in just nap
and woke up a mirror twenty minutes before my afternoon
and twenty minute lesson. Completely unprepared. I started panic, but
then remember, do zombies really exist? Stuff you should know
(43:34):
podcasts I had listened to just earlier that day. My
students are well aware of the zombie apocalypse theory at
the end of the world, but neither I nor they
knew anything about the history of zombies, and I had
been shockingly irresponsible regarding zombie apocalypse survival strategies. So I
jumped online, ran off twenty two copies of how zombies
work from how stuff works dot com, highlighted some very
(43:56):
good vocabulary and some grammar patterns, and had a two
hour lesson ready to go in twenty minutes, all thanks
to you, guys. So there you have it, how you
saved my butt and turning otherwise really awkward two hours
of nothingness into a kick butt zombie survival lesson. Hopefully
your cult following will grow to five, maybe even six people.
Uh and Sam LaRussa thank you for being lazy and
(44:20):
napping on the job and then using our work to
uh do your job. But not really though, because he
could have just been like, Oh, well, I guess they're
just gonna sit there quietly for two hours. He like
really hustled. That's true, he took initiative way to go,
sam uh And thanks to you and you're his wife,
right her girlfriend. Thanks your girlfriend. Thanks to both of
(44:41):
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(45:01):
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M. Hey everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode,
Who Killed JFK. It's from November two thousand thirteen, and
it's a doozy. I hope you enjoy listen now. M
(00:21):
welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and very appropriately for this one,
we have our buddy Matt, who's guest producing because he
(00:43):
knows how to do that kind of thing in addition
to his awesome show stuff they don't want you to know,
which he does with our other friend Ben. And uh
it's it covers conspiracy theories. And we are podcasting on
Who Killed JFK the day before the anniversary of that
Fateful Day anniversary, right fiftieth anniversary, November ninety three in Dallas.
(01:07):
And so you made a joke that Matt was just
going to be over there the whole time, going yeah, really,
uh huh, yeah, it wasn't a mob. Yeah, three tramps whatever.
I like the three trans one. It's it's ridiculous, but
it's my favorite one. Yeah, I got some good stuff
on that. Um. In two thousand three, josh An ABC
(01:27):
News poll came out ten years ago, seventy of Americans
believe the assassination of John F. Kennedy was part of
a broader plot. What percentage believe that and believed that
Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Well, so it's the thing,
it's it will not die. No, it won't. It never will,
I don't think. Well, it's very much entrenched in popular
(01:49):
culture as well to like even it's become a parody
of itself as well. Yeah, and it's just the idea
that there's this outstanding question that will never be put
to rest. Yeah, Like Lone Gunmen and Grassy Knoll, like
all these are almost like buzz terms. Now. Yeah, the
Lone Gunmen, they made an appearance in the X Files,
(02:11):
they were recurring characters. Trio of guys, The Misfits had
probably the best song about the jfk assassination out there. Um,
magic Bullet, But there's a band called Magic Bullets. There's
all sorts of stuff. Um, So let's get into this
because I think our colleague Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff
(02:33):
did a really good job of like handling what could
have easily been like a fifty page quagmire. And he
basically says, like, here's all the facts, and this is
why the what's on the surface is probably the likeliest
thing to happen. Yeah, and happened. We should see you
a little bit here. There are hundreds of books written
(02:56):
about various conspiracies, uh, conspirat c theories on the JFK assassination,
and we are we don't have like eighteen episodes to
dedicate to this, so this will be a skimming of
the topic. UM. I don't want anyone to be like, oh,
Josh and Chuck are gonna get down to the bottom
of this, like people, that's some people's life's work, you know,
(03:18):
dedicated to this. Yeah. I mean, if we're anything, we're dilettants.
That's right. Every week we go from one subject to
the next. That is true. So I guess let's begin
at the beginning, just to get it all out on
the table. Okay, all right, okay, so Chuck Yes. On
November eighth, nine sixty three, UM, the Secret Service found
(03:41):
the proposed route for the president presidential Murdorcaide's visit to
Dallas and there was a reason the President was coming
to Dallas. It was a very good reason. And um,
this is why he was in Texas. Why he was
trying to basically sort of unite the Democratic Party. Um.
(04:03):
He was meeting with with his vice president and uh,
the governor of Texas, and there was some bickering going
on within the party and he basically wanted to He's
trying to get reelected, is what he was doing. Right,
That was a big part of it. But it is true.
Governor Connolly UM and Senator Richard Yarborough were publicly feuding. UM,
and they're both Democrats, So basically their great father was
(04:26):
going to come and make peace with them among them
publicly tour the state of Texas to help him self
get reelected, but also to show Texas like, hey, the
Texas Democrats are all family. Here. Family fights sometimes, but
we're still all family and we still have the same
grand vision. I know, I'm a Catholic from New England,
but we're all the same. Be nine Texan. Uh so okay,
(04:50):
where are we? They found out the route from love
Field to umdely Plaza. They publicize that in the newspapers,
so everyone knew about it. Because you know people, they
wanted people to come out and wave, yeah, like they did.
On November nine, the route was published in the papers
and lived on eight published one yes. And then on
(05:13):
November twenty two, nineteen sixty three, that fateful day, Air
Force one lands at love Field. The President gets in
his presidential limousine and they start making their way toward
Deeley Plaza, along with Governor Connelly and his wife and
of course Jackie and then a couple of secret service dudes.
That's in the one car. In a car behind them
is lb J Senator Yarborough and some other secret service guys. Right,
(05:36):
that's right. So they're apparently as they were headed toward
Deely Plausa, they got delayed because um Kennedy stopped and
kind of soaked up the people waving and cheering and
all that and gave gave some back to him. Yeah,
And so they were a little bit delayed, um getting
to Daly Plaza. But when they did, at about twelve thirty,
(05:58):
as they were arriving in the presidential motorcade, a shot
writing out and then there was two more shots at
least Yeah, and uh with the second shot, they think
the president he threw his hands up to his neck
and Jackie leaned over to kind of like say, what's
(06:20):
going on? And then all of a sudden, the back
right side of the President's head blew off. Yes, it
is very graphic if you see the slowed down enhanced
zapruder film on YouTube today, very affecting too. It's really sad. Yeah,
it is terribly sad. And this was not even a
(06:42):
part of our generation. Like this kind of stuff still
makes people like our parents breakdown sometimes, you know. So
that was thirty Within about anywhere between four and eight seconds,
at least three shots were fired, one missed, probably the
second and third one hit the president first in the
back of the neck, exited his throat, and the third
one blew his head off. Yeah, let's talk about the
(07:05):
that magic bullet since we should go ahead and just
clear that up. Uh it hit I guess that this
is a second bullet that passed through his throat. It
went on to hit Governor Connelly in the back, but
in his armpit. Yeah, below the right armpit. Um exited
below the right nipple. Um then hit his wrist that
was in his lap, and then continued through the wrist
(07:26):
through his left thigh. And that's why they call it
the magic bullet. And if you've seen Oliver Stone's movie,
they kind of, you know, make fun of it in court,
like that is one magic bullet. That's where I got
the name. Back into the left, Back into the left.
Remember the Seinfeld thing, Yeah, with the spit with the
Keith her Nandez. Yeah. Um, but and I remember my
(07:48):
brother in law, the marine, explaining to me years ago
that bullets tumble and can do some really crazy things,
like he's seen it happen on firing ranges and and puts. Also,
this is a very very powerful bullet. It was a
six point five millimeter bullet, which is basically like a
little um how it's her shell. Yeah, it's huge and
(08:10):
it travels very quickly. Yeah, and um, they have done
test that, even though it seems unlikely, that show that
it is possible that a bullet can change directions and
do kind of crazy things once it starts hitting bone
and other things. Yeah. So um, that was, like you said,
the second bullet most likely. Um, within just a few
(08:30):
seconds after the first shot, Kennedy is lying there, um motionless.
Jackie's like reaching back across the trunk of the car
trying to get help from a Secret Service agent who
I believe jumps into the car. Yeah. Well, actually they
think that she was picked up part of his brain tissue. Okay,
(08:51):
I heard that before too. Yeah, I looked into that today,
but I was watching the Repruter film and it looks
it looked to me like she was reaching back like help.
But I've heard that with war as well. Well. Apparently
she was quoted um by I think Connolly's wife and
one other person at the time of saying he's dead
and look, I have I have his brain in my hand. Um.
(09:14):
She I read that her testimony for the Warran Commission
and she says she didn't even remember any of that.
But whether or not that's true, it's awful. And she
was trying to hold his head together on the way
to the hospital. Yeah. So in the car behind them, uh,
a Secret Service agent pounces on LBJ and like throws
him onto the seat and lays on top of him. Um.
(09:36):
I think his name is Rufus young Blood, the CIA
or the Secret Service agent. The motor kid just takes
off to the hospital park Memorial Parkland Parkland Memorial and
um again, the the motor kid inner Dally plos Ave thirty.
By one pm, the President has been pronounced dead at
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. It was just a few
(09:58):
miles away. Um, so that was one pm. That was
one pm. Um. I guess we should talk about the
Grassy Knoll real quick because a lot of people, um
have said, you know, a shot have There were a
lot of misleading and conflicting accounts, which is where a
lot of the trouble started. Eyewitnesses not collaborating stories. Uh.
(10:20):
The acoustics at Dealey Plaza were funky because of all
the buildings and it's three side buildings and then one
side like Grassy Knoll. Basically yeah, so like where did
the shot come from? I thought it came from over
here from the sounds, Um, it was basically pretty tough
to pinpoint. And the Grassy Knoll there was a police
officer named Clyde hey Good that there are pictures of him,
(10:41):
you know, running towards the Grassy Knoll and a lot
of folks thought, hey, he's running like towards a suspect,
when in fact he was running towards another police officer
to you know, say, hey, what should we do? I
guess so the I guess. The way it's been explained
away over the years is the the acoustics and the
fact that that cop was running towards the Grassy Knolls
(11:02):
made some people think that there was more than one
shooter and another shooter was on the Grassy knolls. The
official line is that that is not the case, though.
UM so one PM, the President's pronounced dead at two
thirty eight, UM Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, UH, Johnson's staff, pretty
much everybody was back on Air Force one and um
(11:25):
they called Bobby Kennedy to ask what to do and
to tell him what had happened, and Bobby Kennedy said,
you need to swear Johnson and before you guys leave
the ground. So they found a judge, brought her on board,
and she swore Johnson in as president, and then they
took off and flew back to Washington. Very famous photo, yeah,
with him being sworn in on board Air Force one,
(11:46):
right with Jackie's on NASA's or Jackie Kennedy's face. Just
like the fact that she was able to stand is
pretty amazing. Apparently they turned her in such a way
so that the blood stains were an apparent in a photograph. Man,
I don't know Ifill's air Force one yet. It was
that Look that wasn't okay? Um? All right? So where
(12:07):
are we? Uh? Four minutes after the shooting, Dallas police
uh looked at the Texas School Book Depository building and said, Hey,
that might have been where this came from. It's a
pretty prime location for a sniper. And there was an
eyewitness named Howard Brennan who saw a figure in the
window and gave a description which fit Lee Harvey Oswald.
(12:30):
So this this one dude actually saw him in the
window on the sixth floor. Pretty believable that you could
see someone from that range. The guy said, I knew
it was Oswald all along. So there was a cop
that was in the book depository within two minutes of
the shooting. Yeah, Marian Baker was kind of took the
initiative to go ahead and get in there. So we
went in there and he met up with the superintendent
(12:52):
of the building, a guy named Truly, and they started
um walking up the steps and at the second floor
they came upon Lee Harvey Oswald who was leaving. He
was leaving. Truly vouched for Oswald and Oswald was allowed
to leave. And the reason truly vouched for Oswald's because
just a couple of weeks before, about a month before,
Oswald had gotten a job at that book depository, so
(13:15):
he checked out as far as truly was concerned. The
officer who was with Truly said well, okay, and they
kept looking, and a few minutes after that lieutenant showed
up and took over the crime scene, and they started
scouring the building and on the sixth floor they found
the sniper's nest that's right with UM, three empty cartridges
and the gun UH telescopic rifle, UH telescopic site, and
(13:41):
a bolt action rifle. And it was pretty much a
no brainer at that point, or at least on the surface.
This is where it came from, right, So UM, after
Oswald left his uh left the book depository, he went
to um the place where he was running a room,
the house where he's running a room, and grabbed a pistol.
(14:01):
And as he's walking along and this is about the
same time that Kennedy's being pronounced dead, he's walking along
the street, he Um encountered a cop named J. D. Tippett,
and apparently Oswald just opened fire on this cop shot
him four times, killed him instantly. Yeah. Well, he was
investigating Oswald because the the ap B had already come
through with the description of Oswald, and he was like, well,
(14:25):
this guy fits that description. Let me talk to him.
And it didn't take long though, I don't think there
was much of a discussion before Oswald shot him and
killed him. And um, actually, when Oswald was finally apprehended,
it was for the murder of the cop. They they
didn't know he had anything to do with Kennedy at
the time. Yeah, yeah, at the time. Uh, he ducked
into a theater, the Texas Cedar, into the movie War
(14:48):
as Hell, and I think he snuck in and that's
why they called the cops because they're like, hey, someone
stuck in the theater. So if he would have had
a bought a ticket, he might not have ever been caught.
You never know. You know what's interesting about that, there's
all these parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination. Um,
some are untrue, some are just ridiculous. But one of
them was that John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln in a
(15:11):
theater and went and hit out in a warehouse and
Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy from a warehouse and went
and hit out in a theater where he was caught.
That's a pretty good one. I like that one. Um.
So he was apprehended in the theater and reportedly said, well,
it's all over now. But he also said something interesting
at one point to the media, I'm a patsy, which
(15:33):
has fueled speculation over the years that, uh, well, we'll
get into the different theories before we go any further.
Get this, the president of the United States of America
has just been shot in front of a crowd in Dallas.
That's right. That's huge. That's enormous. That's what's going on
(15:58):
right now. And there's a man hunt for this guy
who's just been caught for killing a cop. Yeah, so
people don't know that the president's killer has just been
caught as well. That's right. So this is a it's
a pretty emotional time. Uh, and let's talk about Oswald himself.
But first, um, let's do a message break and we'll
talk about Oswald when we come back. All right, So
(16:37):
here's a little bit about Lee Harvey Oswald. He was
a mixed up guy. Um, he was sort of an
outcast sort of didn't really fit in. He was born
in Um. His father died two months before he was born,
which I think, you know, probably has a lot to
do with emotional scarring later on and maybe being a
mixed up kid. Uh. He was in an orphanage for
(16:59):
a little while with an older brother and half brother,
but his mother was able to get him back out
of that orphanage uh and raised them by age five.
It was five when he got taken on the orphanage,
which was enough years to also do some damage psychologically.
I think that probably set the theme because I read
a little bit about what you know, contemporary reports of
(17:22):
him growing up concluded his problem was and that it was.
One social worker said that he believed his mother doesn't
give a damn about him so uh, and that somebody
else said that they've never met a kid more emotionally
starved than this guy. Uh. So I'm quite sure that
being left it in an orphanage, even being picked back
up after a while it was, probably did have a
(17:45):
pretty big effect on him on his development and how
he viewed his mother. Well. Yeah, and when you look
at what he did for the rest of his life, um,
it seems like he was always looking for a new
family quote unquote, um, whether it was the Marxist or
the Communists, or Cuba or Russia. Like it seems like
he never I mean, it's kind of a it's like
(18:06):
one o one. You know, he was looking to fit
in somehow somewhere with somebody. But at the same time,
it was always on the fringe of wherever he was at. Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like he's never happy with
where he was. He wanted to fit into whatever was
counter what he was doing or with the status quo
of where he was. Right. So at sixteen, he drops
(18:28):
out of school and tries to join the Marine Corps.
Um he was too young, so they said come back later.
He wrote the Socialist Party when he was Socialist Party
of America when he was seventeen, to say, hey, I'm
weigh into Marxism and like, can I come join her club?
I guess at the very least he sent me a
free button. Uh. And then at seventeen he reapplied to
(18:48):
the Marine Corps and he was old enough at that point,
and turns out he had quite an act for shooting guns.
He's a sharp shooter. During boot camp. But then during
the actual ranking testing only rated as a marksman, which
is still really good. Yeah, just below sharp shoot sharp
shooter the highest or is that dead eyes the highest level?
(19:09):
I think sharp shooters eyes. But at the same time,
even while he was a marine, a Marine marksman, he
um he taught himself Russian. He studied about the Soviet
Union and communism. And this is during the Cold War.
This is like during the most paranoid finger pointing part
of the Cold War. But Oswald's in the Marines, like
(19:29):
teaching himself Russian and everything. To you what I mean,
like a confused guy. Yeah, but even still like it's
just it's so strange to me learning about his experience
that he was relatively left alone while expressing pretty publicly
this interest in the Soviet Union and communism during the
peak of the Cold War. It's just I thought, if
(19:52):
you had, if you even wore the color red, people
like communists get him. But apparently you could just hide
in plain sight or admire the Soviet Union plain sighte Well,
he eventually would find himself on a watch list because
he went to Russia. Um Under um he obtained a
passport falsely with an application to a college in Switzerland
(20:13):
and applied, got to Moscow, applied for citizenship there and
they were like yet, and so he he goes, oh, yeah,
if you know what I mean, and I'm gonna kill myself.
He basically did the same day he was rejected by Russia.
He split his wrist and the warmhearted Soviets were like, well, okay,
you can stay, young man. I thought that was interesting. Yeah,
(20:33):
that's what allowed him to stay. Yeah, yeah, that's just weird.
Yeah it is, so he said, I don't want to
be Um. Well, he he did not officially announce his
citizenship in America, although he expressed interest in doing so. Yeah,
he kind of mouthed off about it, but never actually
did it. That's right. Uh. In Russia, he fell in
(20:56):
love with a lady named Marina Prusakova and and you're
not going to try her middle name nicola Venna nice Nikolaevna. Yeah,
I think that's right. And um, basically he was like,
you know, we should probably go back to the United
States because it turns out Russia sucks. These breadlines. I
weren't expecting them to be so long. Yeah, it said
(21:18):
he'd become disenchanted. I think that's a nice way of
saying that Russia sucked. Right, So he says, Hey, I
know a place where you're gonna love. It's called Texas.
Let's move back there. Uh, just forget the fact that
you don't speak any English, you don't know anybody in Texas.
Everybody back in America thinks I'm a weirdo and I'm
your husband. Uh, just let's go and move to Texas.
(21:41):
And she's like, she said, what did you say in Russian?
He's like, nothing in Russian. And so they moved to
Texas and uh, she apparently very quickly became just she
felt isolated, she didn't have any friends, and a woman
named Ruth Payne um felt bad for and took her
under her wing and they became kind of friends. And
(22:01):
Ruth Paine will come into play a little later on. Yeah,
and this is where he was finally sort of um
on the radar of the FBI. Yeah, when he moved back. Yeah,
you can't move to Russia and then come back. And
they just you know, don't even bother talking to you know,
but they did talk to him and they said, okay,
well listen, if if the USSR gets in touch with
(22:21):
you and want you to do sp N just let
us know, and he went, sure, okay, and they're like,
all right, we'll have a great day. Thanks for the coffee, ma'am.
She's like, what did you say in Russian? That's pretty remarkable.
So on April tenth nine, Um, another interesting thing happened.
A few days after losing his job. He tried to
assassinate Major General Edwin Walker. This guy was a piece
(22:44):
of work himself. Yeah, he was a hardcore right wing conservative,
possibly gay man. Oh I hadn't heard that. Yeah. Later
in life, in the seventies, he was arrested twice for
fondling men in public. I wonder if he was the
model for um, the dad in American Beauty. Oh, maybe
(23:07):
I could see that then. Yeah, I mean he never married,
and they I don't think they ever came right out
and said he was gay. But he was arrested twice
for fondling police officers. Well, Alan Ball, if if that's
the case, email and let us know, okay, Yeah, which
is neither here nor there, but it's interesting. No, But
he he was, like you said, extreme, a right wing
extremist in the very definition of the word. He was very, um,
(23:29):
well respected, decorated military leader, like he was commanding all
of the troops in West Germany at one point when
he was no he hated the Kennedy's. He called Harry
Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt pink, which means that they were
communists sympathizers, which is a big deal. He was temporarily
relieved of his post while he was investigated for that,
(23:52):
and he said, you know what, I'm not even gonna
I'm not going back because the US has given up
his sovereignty to the United Nations and I can't fight
for it any longer. And this guy was so convinced
by his own convictions that he refused a military pension
for years afterwards because he didn't want to have anything
(24:12):
to do with him. Well, apparently he refused it, but
then kind of quietly tried to get it. Well, then
they gave it to him. Yeah um, But then he
was celebrated as a great soldier later on in life
and after his death. Oh yeah. So another example though
of Oswald is sort of a confused guy, like he
tries to assassinate this right wing conservative general. He also
(24:33):
was a marine. He also killed Kennedy. He was just
sort of like it didn't seem like he knew what
he believed. Well, he believed that Um was the general's name.
Walker was like Hitler in the making. Yeah, basically that
he was an extremist who needed to be taken up.
But he missed. Yeah, from about a hundred feet away.
He shot into his dining room from the street where
(24:57):
he was sitting at a desk and hit the window
pane and uh it, you know, made the bullet go
a different directions, So he missed. So Lee Harvey Oswald's
basically doing anything he can to insinuate himself in international
global politics. Yeah, but he got away with it like
they never It was a cold case until they finally
caught him and put the You know, I think his
(25:18):
wife was the one who's who fingered him later on, Yeah,
because he comes home and says, Hey, we're moving to
New Orleans and she's like, what did you just say?
And so they moved to New Orleans and Um while
they're there, she's like, I've had enough, you're shooting at
UM public figures. Now we're moving from Texas to New Orleans.
(25:41):
I'm moving back And she moved in with her friend
Ruth Payne, and that surely had an effect and impact
on Oswald. There's no way it couldn't because he already
had abandonment issues from his mother. Now his wife leaves
him because he's just crazy, and he's like, well, you
know what, fine, I'm gonna stay here and I'm going
(26:03):
to start a chapter of a pro Cuba pro Castro
sympathizer club, and I'm going to be the one and
only member. But I'm gonna be a loudmouth member. Well
I think he wanted more than one member. But it
was another example of like nobody was interested in this guy. Nobody.
Russia didn't want him. No one joined his club, his
wife left him, Cuba didn't want him. No. He went
(26:24):
down to Mexico and visited the Cuban and Russian embassies,
trying to basically get in them with them, and they
were like, no, that's okay, thanks man. Yeah, like nobody was.
I think the words strictly used was no one was
ever very impressed with Oswald. They were unimpressed. So yet
in Cuban officials, I mean, if this guy was a Patsy,
(26:45):
he was the perfect Patsy. Oh yeah. But you can
also take all of this evidence and say well this
is what made him do this. Yeah, if he was
a patsy, you imagine how easy it would have been
for like one of the theories is the mafia, for
them to put their arm around and be like, you're
you're pretty great guy, right, you know what you should do?
You should kill the president. Yeah. Yeah, he would have
(27:06):
been very easy to manipulate. I imagine because he's also
just twenty four. It when he was a kid, which
is crazy. Um so he uh, he left New Orleans,
went back to Dallas, got a job, and about a
month later at the school book Depository, uh, shot and
killed John F. Kennedy. Yes, so, um Oswald's done his shooting.
(27:30):
He's caught. They started to investigate his background and Lyndon
Johnson ordered a um an investigation, a full investigation into
the Kennedy assassination. What happened? Lessons learned all that stuff?
And this commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren UH
was called the Warren Commission and the report. They compiled
(27:53):
several hundred page reports called the Warren Report, And in
addition to the several hundred page report, they also released
twenty six volumes of transcripts of the hearings that they conducted.
So it's this exhaustive investigation that was very transparent. Supposedly,
there's so many documents that to to try to censor them,
(28:14):
really censor them, it would be virtually impossible. So a
lot of people point to the very fact that the
warr report is so voluminous that it is like in
fact correct and it's not part of a larger cover
up at least. Yeah, and I've sent you the article.
Did you read the one from the New York Times
that some people think they're still documents the CIA won't release. Well,
(28:36):
they won't. Well, but the one anti conspiracy guy that
they interviewed said, people that I don't know how the
CIA works that believe this stuff. He went, there would
be no documents, period. They wouldn't be hiding things, they
wouldn't exist Operation Killed President Kennedy. Yeah, I mean he's
sort of like a little pad on the head, like
you think there are documents, you sweet little conspiracy theorists. Um,
(28:59):
all right, So the Warrant Commission comes out, and immediately
conspiracy theorists start to suggest different things, like one theory
was that it was an outside job by the KGB
and or Cuba, right, we should say the Warrant Commission
concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy on his
own volution, by himself, um, without acting at the behester
(29:24):
the benefit of anybody else, just a lone, singular, crazed gunman.
So the conspiracy theories are everybody else saying no, that's
not the case. And we gave the example of the
Grassy Knoll, the acoustics and daily plause of the fact
that a cop was running towards the Grassy Knoll and
conflicting eyewitness accounts, Like from the literal beginning of this event.
(29:49):
In history, there have been all sorts of hey that
people have been able to make conspiracy theories out of,
Like there's been no shortage of all sorts of different
weird things that you can start to piece together with
other things and come up with these very interesting, some
um sound conspiracy theories, but that when you really get
(30:11):
down to them, they're not supported by evidence exactly. I'm
glad you said that, Uh, the KGB or Cuba theory
that maybe their governments were acting out and trying to
kill Kennedy had some legs because the Bay of Pigs
had just happened. They were certainly no friends of Kennedy
at the height of the Cold War. There was definitely
a motive there, but Um, there was no evidence to
(30:32):
tie Oswald in any substantive way to either of these countries. No,
they looked at his finances over They went back a
year and a half and looked at his finances to
see if there were any weird payments or whatever. And
apparently the only amount total that they could have they
couldn't account for came to like a hundred and sixty dollars.
(30:53):
It could have been cash and diamonds, though I guess
it could have Been's how they like the deal. One
of the other popular theories I mentioned was the mob
and that Jack Ruby was working with the mob and
the second Oswald said, I'm a patsy. They're like, we
need to go take care of this, like right now. Yeah,
we haven't mentioned Jack Ruby. Two days after Um Kennedy
was killed, Um, they were transporting Lee Harvey Oswald and
(31:18):
a guy named Jack Ruby, who was a Dallas nightclub owner,
came up and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the chest
and killed him. Lee Harvey Oswald actually died in Parkland
memorial the same hospital that Kennedy had two days before. Yeah,
a very famous photo which has since been made into
very funny photo. Have you seen the band one? No,
you never saw that. It was big years ago. It was,
(31:40):
you know, the photo of Ruby killing Kennedy, and someone
went in and photoshopped in musical instruments because they're all
like have different, you know, pained expressions. And Jack Ruby's
at the keys, and I think Lee Harvey Oswald has
a guitar and it looks like it's pretty funny. Check
it out. How about another moment here for a message
break June. All right, let's get back to it. So
(32:18):
we were talking about the mafia um because Jack Ruby
owned a nightclub. Everybody's just like, well, he's went down
with the mob. What's more, Lee Harvey Oswald probably was
acting on behalf of the mob because he had an
uncle in New Orleans who was mafia connected. Mobbed up
as they say, they Yeah, but um, apparently there's no
(32:39):
evidence that Oswald and his uncle communicated at all, and
the these connections are fairly uh tenuous at best. Jack
Ruby himself said that the reason he did it was
because he wanted to spare Jacqueline and Caroline the heartper
(33:00):
of having to come back to Dallas to testify against
Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh really, that's what he officially said,
And apparently there's a transcript of and it is just hearsay,
but it's um Oswald talking with his lawyer saying that, um,
he's saying, like this whole charade we're doing. That he
(33:22):
that he shot Oswald while he was blacked out, and
he he can't be held responsible. That it's all just
it's just just stupid, and they should go with the
truth that you know, he did this because he wanted
to spare Jackie. Interesting, that's supposedly it. But then apparently
also he's supposedly he said that that was a charade
as well, So who knows. Well. Another theory is that
(33:44):
it was the CIA and it was an inside job.
Kennedy had criticized their practices and um was, you know,
trying to scale down Vietnam, and those weren't very popular
things to do at the time if you were in
the government, and so lot of people say, you know what,
Lennon Johnson might have orchestrated this whole thing, and it
was an inside job with the c I a there
(34:06):
like he barely ever wore pants for God's sake. Uh.
I don't know if this remained true to her death,
but both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy at one point
I believe that quote he was felled by domestic opponents. Um.
And of course Bobby died not too long after five years.
(34:29):
But UM, I don't know if Jackie held that opinion
her entire life. I'm not sure about that. I'm curious,
but it seems to ring a bell that like she
was suspicious of lb J. Yeah. UM, I know. Since
two thousand, there have been five legit tenured historians that
have published studies. In four or the five concluded that
there was probably some larger conspiracy at work, but none
(34:50):
of them agreed on what it was, so it's hard
to get a consensus. So ultimately, what the what it
came down to the official line was that there were Um,
there was a rifle that had Oswald's fingerprints on it
that was found at the crime scene. That there is
a picture in existence that of Oswald holding that exact
(35:11):
same rifle before the crime was committed. Um, he had
already tried to kill a general. Yeah, and the fact
that he said, well it's all over now when he
was apprehended and take all this together everybody who A
lot of people think it was Oswald. That's the official line, right. Yeah.
And the Zuppruter film has been used to that. You know, hey,
(35:34):
how can you shoot someone from this direction and the
head go that direction? Um. There were other films of
the incident, but the Supruter is the most complete. UM.
I did look at some of the others. I've never
seen any of those before. It's weird to see it
from different angles. Yeah, if you're used to seeing just
the Zapruder film. UM. So the Warrant Commission did not
(35:55):
put this issue to bed at all, even back then. Uh.
The there was another commission that took place in the
nineteen seventies six, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and
they investigated both JFK and Martin Luther King's assassinations. And
this is a group of UM House representatives who, you know,
(36:20):
it's true, are known for being the rabble rousers of
the government, that branch of government. UM. But they basically
investigated this, carried out a full investigation and found that
you know, what we actually think that JFK did die
as a result of a conspiracy. We don't think it
was the mob, we don't think it was the c
i A, we don't think it was the FBI, and
(36:40):
we don't think it was the Cubans. But we do
believe that it was a conspiracy and that um Lee
Harvey Oswell did not act alone. This is the House
of Representatives saying that, Yeah, well, they initially said that
there were four shots, but they were actually wrong. And
then later we can did that um with acoustic evidence
and said, you know what, we were wrong on that,
(37:02):
and they did never find any like hard evidence. But
was there did they remain true to that statement? Yeah,
that were never their final report in yeah, um, yeah,
that it was part of a conspiracy. So that definitely
didn't quell any No. And as a matter of fact,
it's like, oh, well, the House of Representatives just said
Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy, like if
(37:24):
if it was dying down before it flared right back up.
And there was another one almost at the same time,
a Rockefeller Commission by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. And a
lot of people think that the Rockefeller Commission was basically
just like a fact finding committee that was there to
basically cover up in um derail any other investigations. Yeah,
(37:45):
kind of like, we got this, we got this. You know.
It didn't work though, because of the House Select Committee. Well,
they invalidated one of our favorite little parts of the theory,
the three tramps theory. Um. At the time, there were
these three vagrants that were detained by police that had
been traveling by box cars supposedly, and um, that's how
(38:08):
they travel often, that is how they travel. And two
of the men for a while, we're believed to have
been E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, who were the
dudes who broke into Watergate, which would be a nice
little coincidence. Yeah. Well there's a whole side by side
photographic comparison of the tune. I mean it looks a
lot like well it does. Um, the FBI got experts
(38:31):
to do the same thing though that said, no, that
it's not them and the third guy. And if you're
a conspiracy theorists, you're like, oh, okay, well thanks, FBI,
appreciate that. I believe you. Um. The third guy was
rumored to be Woody Harrelson's dad, Charles Harrison. He was
a hitman, and he they were estranged by the way,
(38:53):
Woody Harrelson is not like he doesn't talk about this much.
It's not one of his favorite topics. Sorry, I know
we gotta talk about it. But um, he he killed
a federal judge. And then when he was caught in
a standoff of nineteen eighty high on cocaine, he said
I killed Kennedy too, and then later on recanted that
and said, I just said that because I was high
(39:15):
on cocaine. Yeah, and I was trying to elongate my life.
And like they I don't think they would have killed
me if they if I had information what it was.
That's what he said in a in an interview from prison.
But conspiracy theorists latched onto this and said he's the
third tramp. He was the youngest one of the three.
And the pictures kind of look alike, you know it
to Harrison's dad was one of a trio of men
(39:37):
who killed JFK. Well, all of this could have been
put to bed if the dudes look nothing like the
other guys, but they all kind of did. So another
thing to add fuel to the fire, for sure. And
we should say also there's um even more like you
were saying, the CIA still still will not declassify documents
that they have about the JFK assassination. That's not helping things.
(40:00):
Something did come to light though, from UM investigations into
the CIA. The a guy named George Joannity's he Um
was a CIA agent who was basically in charge of
a group of anti Cuban student dissidents right or anti
Castro Cuban student dissidents, and he was running their operation
(40:22):
in Miami and New Orleans. They actually beat up Lee
Harvey Oswald while he was in New Orleans handing out
pamphlets that were pro Cuban and pro Castro um like
a few months before the assassination. So George Joannity's ran
that operation and then later on in n when the
(40:43):
House Select Committee was investigating it again, he was the
liaison for the CIA, But no one told the How
Select Committee the involvement he'd had before. Interesting, Yeah, well, uh,
with what he's dad, he actually had a co conspiracor
that said, you know what, he confessed this before to
me and even drew maps about where he was hiding
(41:03):
the day it happened. Um. But in arrest records were released,
and that identified the three tramps as uh Gus Abrams,
Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. It was all sound like suspicious,
made up names. And they I think they interviewed a
couple of these guys later in life and they're like, yeah,
(41:24):
we were the guys, and we were just boxcar dudes,
even though we had suits on and we're clean shaven,
and oh well, everybody back then was like, even if
you were like just the total complete hobo, you still
wore a suit in Fedora usually. Uh So again people
(41:45):
point to that and say, these clearly weren't you know,
these guys were paid or you know. And then a
lot of other hanky things happened. People disappeared, witnesses disappeared. Um,
it's it's never going to die. I don't think. I
don't think anyone will ever at this go. But that's
that's what makes a great conspiracy theory, right. There's just
too many facts outstanding that just can't be put to bed.
(42:10):
So you got anything else, I got nothing else. If
you want to learn more about this, or if this
piqued your interest, you should definitely check out our buddies
over at stuff. They don't want you to know. They
have a huge, awesome body of work um that they
put together over the years and continue to do so. Uh.
And you can also read this article on how stuff
works dot com by typing JFK into the search bar
(42:32):
and see what comes up. And since I said search part,
it means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
this Chinese zombies from sam LaRussa. Hey, guys, don't know
if you're aware of this, but you have a bit
of a cult here in Wuhan, China. Awesome a whole
two people, my girlfriend and I still it's pretty great. Yeah.
We listen to you all the time and as you
(42:53):
tell us about stuff we should know. Um. We're both
English teachers, and outside of with each other, the Stuff
you Should Know podcast is just about the only English
speaking we get on a day to day basis. Um.
I have an incident though to write you about where
stuff you should know save my butt and it just
happened yesterday. Wu Hand schools have a three hour siesta
(43:14):
to avoid the hottest part of the day, and I
usually use the time to plan lessons or take a nap. Um.
Yesterday I decided to forego planning lessons in just nap
and woke up a mirror twenty minutes before my afternoon
and twenty minute lesson. Completely unprepared. I started panic, but
then remember, do zombies really exist? Stuff you should know
(43:34):
podcasts I had listened to just earlier that day. My
students are well aware of the zombie apocalypse theory at
the end of the world, but neither I nor they
knew anything about the history of zombies, and I had
been shockingly irresponsible regarding zombie apocalypse survival strategies. So I
jumped online, ran off twenty two copies of how zombies
work from how stuff works dot com, highlighted some very
(43:56):
good vocabulary and some grammar patterns, and had a two
hour lesson ready to go in twenty minutes, all thanks
to you, guys. So there you have it, how you
saved my butt and turning otherwise really awkward two hours
of nothingness into a kick butt zombie survival lesson. Hopefully
your cult following will grow to five, maybe even six people.
Uh and Sam LaRussa thank you for being lazy and
(44:20):
napping on the job and then using our work to
uh do your job. But not really though, because he
could have just been like, Oh, well, I guess they're
just gonna sit there quietly for two hours. He like
really hustled. That's true, he took initiative way to go,
sam uh And thanks to you and you're his wife,
right her girlfriend. Thanks your girlfriend. Thanks to both of
(44:41):
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