Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Jack Ruby’s Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald

Jack Ruby’s Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald On the morning of November 24, 1963, arrangements were made to transfer Oswald from the Dallas city jail to the Dallas County jail, with press told the transfer would not occur before 10 a.m. Between 2:30 and 3 a.m. that day, anonymous death threats against Oswald had been received by the FBI and county sheriff’s office, but press crowded the jail basement to film the transfer, which was moved up to use an unmarked police car for speed. At approximately 11:20 a.m., Oswald emerged from the jail office flanked by detectives and walked toward the car in the glare of television camera lights. Jack Ruby stepped out from the press area to the right of the cameras, walked to within a few feet of Oswald, and fired a single shot from a Colt .38 revolver into Oswald’s abdomen. Oswald was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital at 1:07 p.m. without regaining consciousness. Ruby was arrested immediately, denied any conspiracy connection to the Kennedy assassination, and claimed he killed Oswald in a spontaneous fit of rage and grief over the President’s death. He was indicted for Oswald’s murder on November 26, 1963, found guilty on March 14, 1964, sentenced to death, and his appeal was pending as of September 1964.

Commission Conclusions on the Kennedy Assassination

Commission Conclusions on the Kennedy Assassination The Warren Commission, created to investigate the facts surrounding the Kennedy assassination and related events, conducted a full independent investigation with complete cooperation from all government agencies, and presented its reasoned, unanimous conclusions after a thorough search for the truth. Its first conclusion was that the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor John Connally were fired from the sixth floor southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository, based on four supporting findings: (a) multiple witnesses saw a rifle being fired from the window, and some saw a rifle there immediately after the shots; (b) the nearly intact bullet found on Governor Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital and two bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine were fired from the 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the Depository’s sixth floor, to the exclusion of all other weapons; (c) the three spent cartridge cases found near the sixth floor window were fired from the same rifle, to the exclusion of all other weapons; and (d) the presidential limousine’s windshield was struck by a bullet fragment on its interior surface but was not penetrated.