President Kennedy's Unsolved Murder

Essay by qwerty9High School, 12th gradeA+, March 2004

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Ask anyone old enough to have been alive in November of 1963 where they were when President Kennedy was shot, and they'll most likely be able to recall. There is no doubt the events that took place that day in Dallas shook the Nation. Americans wanted answers, but they lost many when two days after their president died his suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, died too, fatally shot by Jack Ruby. Now, almost 40 years later the truth is still buried under piles of controversial evidence and outrageous theories, but one logical conclusion can be drawn: the assassination was most definitely the result of a conspiracy.

One week after President Kennedy was assassinated, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, issued an executive order calling for an investigation into the deaths of both Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. The committee of investigators became known as the Warren Commission, named after the presiding Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren.

After six months of hearings the commission released the Warren Report. It included witness testimony, physical evidence, and documentation of official reenactments. In the 1970s the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), another government funded investigation, put the question back in everyone's mind: Who really shot JFK?

It was a bright sunny day in downtown Dallas, Texas. President Kennedy, accompanied by his wife Jackie and Texas Governor John Connally, was riding in the rear of the presidential limo on his way to speak at the Dallas Trade Mart. As the motorcade made its turn onto Elm Street, it passed the soon-to-be infamous Texas SchoolBook Depository where Oswald was perched and poised to kill. The motorcade had been slowly exiting Dealey Plaza with the depository directly behind it when the shots rang out, approximately 12:30 PM. When it was all over Governor Connally had been...