matched the description given by eye-witnesses to the  event, and had earlier shot and killed Dallas officer J.D. Tippit when confronted about the assassination.   

However, Oswald's case never made it to trial.  Two days after the assassination, as Oswald was being moved from the city jail to the county jail, nightclub operator Jack Ruby approached Oswald and shot him point blank in the chest. Ruby later died while awaiting his death sentence, but only referenced his hatred of Oswald for killing his president as the reason for committing the crime.  Today, historians continue to debate if Oswald was the sole assassin, whether others were involved, or if Kennedy's assassination was a cover-up for something much larger.  In the end of this investigation, you will answer the question . . .

The gun that was recovered in the "sniper's nest" in the depository  was described by investigators at the time as a "cheap, old weapon."  Tests of the weapon's accuracy showed that it was very inconsistent,  unreliable, and pulling the trigger so difficult that it was nearly  impossible to maintain aim on a target. In 2007, Italian weapons  experts used the same rifle to simulate Oswald's supposed shooting;  they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds. Shortly after Oswald was arrested, a paraffin test was performed to extract  gunpowder residue to determine if he  

had fired a rifle. Tests showed residue on his hands but not on his cheek; being a  gun owner, Oswald likely fired a pistol in  the days leading up to the assassination.  

This is not unusual. However, if he had  fired a rifle, using a scope, residue would most certainly have been on his cheek.  

R.C. Longworth, Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

 

Judith Exner, a mistress of President John F. Kennedy, was quoted Sunday as saying she carried both money and intelligence data between Kennedy and Chicago mobster Sam Giancana ''on at least 20 occasions.''
Although Exner`s ties to both Kennedy and Giancana have been long known, a story in the Sunday Times, distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, said it provided the first public testimony that Kennedy took a direct role in trying to buy the 1960 election and, later, to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Exner was quoted as saying that the money was passed before Kennedy`s election in 1960 and was used to influence both the Democratic Party primary in West Virginia and Kennedy`s crucial, razor-thin margin over Richard Nixon in Illinois in the presidential election.
The syndicated article was written by American writer Anthony Summers, author of ''The Kennedy Conspiracy.'' Summers said he interviewed Exner, now 57, whom he said is dying of cancer.

''With her new statements,'' he said, ''Exner becomes the first primary source to offer apparent confirmation that Kennedy cheated his way toward election, and plotted the murder of a foreign leader in peacetime. If Exner`s account is accepted, the president`s reputation will be damaged beyond recovery.''

Summers quoted Exner as saying: ''After Jack was elected, Sam used to tease me all the time. He`d say, `Your boyfriend wouldn`t be president if it wasn`t for me.` He`d say this in a serious way, too. My impression was that Sam bought the influence, that he had a direct effect on the result of the election.''

The intelligence data, which she carried in envelopes to Giancana, related to the plot to assassinate Castro. The existence of CIA-Mafia plans to kill the Cuban leader also have been long known, but not Kennedy`s direct participation.

''Fairly early on,'' Exner said, ''Jack told me outright. He said the envelopes contained `intelligence material` and that it involved the elimination of Fidel Castro.''

'' . . . I was right in the middle of my relationship with him, and I loved him,'' she said. ''He was also the president, and I don`t think I felt qualified to question it. I was a young woman in my 20s, and I was not that deeply into politics.
'But I knew what was going on, and Jack knew,'' she said. ''Jack fully participated in the CIA involvement with the underworld.''
Exner said she met Kennedy through Frank Sinatra. On April 6, 1960, during the Democratic primary campaign, and while Kennedy`s pregnant wife was absent, she went to his Georgetown home, she said. ''Jack asked if I would mind taking something to Sam for him,'' she said. ''I said, `What is it?` And he said, `It`ll be cash, money. A lot of money.`

''I didn`t know where the money was going to go when it left Sam, but I knew it had to do with the campaign,'' she said. ''But I wasn`t stupid and I read the papers. And I probably deduced someone was being paid off.''

She said she took the train to Chicago and gave the money to Giancana in Union Station. She took more money to Giancana during the general election campaign, she said. Exner said she was present when Kennedy and Giancana met in a room at Chicago`s Ambassador East Hotel on April 28, 1961, to talk about the Castro assassination.

That Exner had been the mistress of both Kennedy and Giancana became known in 1975. In 1988, she told author Kitty Kelley that she had acted as a go-between for Kennedy and Giancana who, like Kennedy, was later murdered.

But Summers said his article provided the first information on what she carried between the two men. He quoted her saying she was too afraid to tell the whole truth in 1975 and didn`t tell Kelley because she ''did not trust her.''

Now, she said, she was telling the whole story because ''I think any woman caught up in scandal should fight back. When a politician like Jack Kennedy`s philandering comes out, he`s just a `naughty boy.` But the woman comes over as a tramp, a 🤬.

''I`ve always been reluctant to implicate Jack,'' she said. ''He trusted me as a go-between. But I think he put me in too much danger. . . . I was the instrument that would keep anyone one step away from proving Jack`s connection to the assassination plots.''