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 Killing Oswald, directed with an eye for detail by Shane O’Sullivan, explains the whole story of the events in the life of Oswald leading up to the assassination of JFK, events that many people may not be aware of. Oswald, who was assassinated two days after JFK, led a very complex and strange life prior to that fateful day on Nov. 22, 1963, a day that changed the course of history, when JFK was shot in the head in Dealey Plaza by a sniper who was in the Texas School Book Depository.

Killing Oswald uses archival footage, old and new interviews with people associated with Oswald either directly or indirectly, and dramatic reconstructions to tell Oswald’s story.

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans on Oct. 18, 1939. His father died of a heart attack two months after he was born, leaving his eccentric mother to raise him. When Oswald was four, his family moved to Dallas, Texas. After a brief stint living in New York City, his family was back living in New Orleans. According to Killing Oswald, as a teenager, Oswald considered himself a Marxist, and at the young age of 17 joined the United States Marine Corps. The Corps eventually sent him to Japan, where he had access to classified matter in his role as a radar operator. He was also trained to be a marksman. In Oct. 1959, Oswald received a hardship discharge claiming his mother needed care. Returning back to New Orleans for two days, Oswald then went to the Soviet Union. This is when, according to Killing Oswald, Oswald’s strange behavoir and communist loyalties started.

The reason Oswald went to the Soviet Union was to defect. In a recreation of the event in the film, Oswald tells officials there that he was a communist and that he could share with them confidential information that he had obtained during his time as a marine. The Russians, skeptical of him, sent him off to Minsk to monitor U2 spy planes over Russia, basically an attempt to sweep him under the rug. Getting married and having a daughter, Oswald got bored of life in Minsk and returned to the United States where his family settled in Dallas. Oswald then became a pro-Castro activist, living in New Orleans while his family lived in Dallas with Ruth Petrie (original footage an a 1973 interview with her is very telling). According to Killing Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald was leading a very secret life, and it was suspected that went to Mexico to try to get to Cuba but was unsuccessful, returning back to New Orleans to found the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-castro organization (with amazing real footage of Oswald passing out literature). The movie raises doubts that perhaps it was not Oswald but someone posing as him who went to Mexico.

The film features many leading historians speaking about the assassination and Oswald’s involvement, including the conclusion that perhaps Oswald didn’t act alone. In April 1963, Oswald was suspected of attempting to kill U.S. Major General Edwin Walker, who was an outspoken anti-communist. It was also around this same time that anti-Castro Cubans lured Oswald into a plot to kill Kennedy that could have triggered a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Original interview footage with David Atlee Phillips, a former CIA officer goes on to state that Oswald had attended meetings of Alpha 66, an organization which at that time was to plot the overthrow of Cuba. Was Oswald there to secretly spy on their activity for another organization?

In the days leading up to Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald’s behavior became even more weird. It was also during this time that FBI agents were attempting to find Oswald to question him about his pro-Castro activities. Then on Nov. 22nd, JFK was shot in the

Original dramatic footage of JFK’s assassination and the aftermath in Dallas, Texas during that time shows that JKF was shot twice, the first bullet entering his upper back, and the second bullet, which entered the rear of JFK’s head. Oswald was arrested later in the day, in a Dallas theatre. It was suspected, but never actually proven, that Oswald shot a police officer who pulled him almost an hour after the shooting as Oswald had matched the description of the person who killed the president. Oswald was seen going into the theatre and arrested minutes later. In a feeling of actually seeing it live, Killing Oswald replays the footage of Jack Ruby firing one shot into Oswald’s stomach, in the police basement, as the shooting was live on television and millions of television viewers witnessed it. Ruby was known to be involved in organized crime.

Killing Oswald goes on to explain that there are so many theories, too many to mention here, as to who was behind the killing of JFK? Did Ruby kill Oswald to stop him from speaking to the police about an organized crime connection to the assassination? Anti-Castro Cubans lure Oswald into a plot to kill JFK? Was there a second shooter? Is there a link to Russia in the assassination due to Oswalds ties with the Soviet Union? While killing Oswald can’t answer all these questions, it is an important documentary about a time in American history when the nation stopped for four days.