The JFK Files

Dallas nightclub owner who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, two days after the assassination, in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters. The shooting was broadcast live on national television. Ruby was convicted of murder in 1964 and sentenced to death, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He died of a pulmonary embolism related to lung cancer on January 3, 1967, while awaiting a new trial. Questions persist about whether Ruby acted on his own impulse or was directed by organized crime figures to silence Oswald.

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Identified by the Warren Commission as the lone assassin. Former U.S. Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning to the U.S. Killed by Jack Ruby two days after the assassination.

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Soviet-born wife of Lee Harvey Oswald. Born Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova in Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk), Soviet Union. She married Oswald in April 1961 while he was living in the Soviet Union. She emigrated to the United States with him in June 1962. Marina testified before the Warren Commission that Oswald owned a rifle and had attempted to assassinate retired Major General Edwin Walker in April 1963. Her testimony was central to establishing Oswald as the lone gunman. She later expressed doubts about whether Oswald acted alone.

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Former airline pilot, amateur cancer researcher, and Civil Air Patrol leader based in New Orleans. Ferrie was investigated by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as a possible conspirator in the Kennedy assassination. Ferrie had connections to anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, had been an associate of Guy Banister (a former FBI agent), and was alleged to have known Oswald through Civil Air Patrol activities in the late 1950s. Ferrie was found dead in his New Orleans apartment on February 22, 1967, just days after Garrison publicly announced his investigation. The coroner ruled the death natural, caused by a berry aneurysm, though the timing fueled conspiracy theories.

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Boss of the New Orleans Mafia family from the 1940s until his imprisonment in 1983. Marcello was one of the organized crime figures investigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978-1979 in connection with the Kennedy assassination. The HSCA concluded that individual members of organized crime, including Marcello, had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate the President but could not establish direct evidence of involvement. FBI informant Jack Van Laningham reported in 1985 that Marcello had privately admitted involvement in the assassination, though this claim remains disputed. Marcello died in 1993.

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Dallas dressmaker and amateur filmmaker who captured the assassination of President Kennedy on his 8mm Bell & Howell Zoomatic home movie camera from a concrete pedestal on the north side of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. The 26.6-second film, known as the Zapruder film, is the most complete visual record of the assassination and has been central to every investigation. The original film was purchased by Life magazine for $150,000. In 1999, the U.S. government paid the Zapruder family $16 million for the original film under eminent domain.

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District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, who conducted the only criminal prosecution related to the Kennedy assassination. In 1967, Garrison charged New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate the President. The trial, held in early 1969, ended with Shaw being acquitted by a jury in less than an hour. Garrison alleged a broader conspiracy involving the CIA, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and elements of the U.S. military-industrial complex. While his case was widely criticized at the time, some of his broader claims about CIA involvement and government coverup gained more credibility after later disclosures by the HSCA and declassified documents.

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Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 until his death in 1972. Hoover directed the FBI investigation of the Kennedy assassination and communicated findings to the Warren Commission. Declassified documents have revealed that the FBI under Hoover destroyed a threatening note Oswald delivered to the Dallas FBI field office weeks before the assassination. Critics have alleged that Hoover pushed the lone-gunman conclusion to protect the Bureau from scrutiny over its failure to monitor Oswald more closely after his return from the Soviet Union.

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Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1953-1961) who served as a member of the Warren Commission. President Kennedy had fired Dulles from the CIA in November 1961 following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Critics have questioned the appropriateness of placing a former CIA director dismissed by the victim onto the commission investigating his death. Dulles had extensive knowledge of CIA covert operations including assassination plots against foreign leaders, information that was not fully disclosed to other commission members.

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35th President of the United States. Assassinated on November 22, 1963, while traveling in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

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