President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot on November 22, 1963, as his open-topped limousine glided through Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. Within hours, Dallas police arrested and charged a young New Orleans native, Lee Oswald, who worked in a building overlooking the plaza, situated just where Kennedy’s car had to slow down to negotiate a sharp turn.
Eyewitness accounts differed about the origin and number of shots. But a substantial majority of onlookers, including both civilians and law enforcement, initially believed the shots had come from in front of the vehicle, not the rear — the site of the Texas School Book Depository building where Oswald worked at the time Kennedy was struck.
By the next day, authorities were actively dispelling speculation about multiple shooters, adamantly insisting that they had the lone-wolf culprit. Oswald emphatically denied having shot anyone — but before he could expound on his innocence, he was murdered on November 24, while in police custody, by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who maintained long-standing friendships with both police and organized crime. Despite compelling reasons to dig further, the lone-wolf narrative almost immediately became the official story, reinforced by the September 1964 Warren Commission report and subsequently promulgated by the media. This simplistic account is still widely cited today.
This, despite a late 1970s investigation by a House panel that was longer, better resourced, and far more rigorous, and concluded essentially the opposite: that conspiracy was probably involved.
Had they known of the following conversation, they might not have used the word “probably.”
Hellbound and Down 