Lee Harvey Oswald’s first assassination attempt was a failure: Who did he try to kill before JFK?

Today marks the 61st anniversary of US president John F. Kennedy’s assassination - a watershed moment in US politics, the details of which still divide historians over half a century on.

JFK was struck by two bullets as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas at 12:30 pm on Friday 22 November 1963.

JFK shot twice

The first bullet entered at the back of the president’s neck and exited through the lower front part. On its own, the shot would probably not have been fatal. But a second bullet caused wounds from which JFK would be unable to recover.

The alleged perpetrator, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine, fled the scene and was apprehended an hour later as he hid inside the Texas movie theater on West Jefferson Boulevard.

Several witnesses testified that they saw Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository, where the shots are believed to have been fired from a sixth-floor window.

During his escape, Oswald shot and killed local policeman J. D. Tippit who had stopped him on suspicion of being the assassin (witness Howard Brennan had given police a description of the assailant).

In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald shot and killed Kennedy and had acted alone.

We know little about Oswald’s motives and since he was murdered two days after the event (shot as he was being escorted to jail), we will never know.

Lee Harvey Oswald marked by a difficult childhood

Even the details of his background are sketchy. He is known to have had a traumatic childhood - his father died two months before he was born which put a huge financial strain on the family. He, long with his brothers, was sent to an orphans' home where he stayed until his was four years old.

It is also reported that he was bullied in school - all of those events undoubtedly shaped his outlook on life. One week after his 17th birthday, he enlisted with the US Marines was trained to become a marksman.

As an adult, Oswald became interested in Marxism and communist doctrine although he was never affiliated with the communist party. Described as a loner with few friends, Lee’s time in the Marine Corps was not was he had expected and after being court-martialed twice, he was discharged in 1959.

He defected to the Soviet Union “to find freedom” but even that dream soon faded, prompting his return to the US in June 1961. His personal struggles continued and he was unable to hold down a job.

Edwin Walker assassination attempt

In March 1963, using the assumed name A. Hidell, he purchased a secondhand 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle and a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver.

A month later, Edwin Walker, a retired US Major General was sat at his desk in the dining room of his Dallas home when a bullet struck the window frame. Fragments hit his forearm, causing lacerations.

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald fired the Carcano rifle at Walker through a window of a nearby building. For some reason, he held a grudge against Walker who, according to the testament by his wife Marina, “was a very bad man, that he was a fascist, that he was the leader of a fascist organization, and when I said that even though all of that might be true, just the same he had no right to take his life, he said if someone had killed Hitler in time it would have saved many lives“.

Oswald had staked out Walker’s home and jotted down his assassination plot in a notebook which was later destroyed by his wife.

Character reports suggest that Oswald strove for notoriety - he believed that assassinating a high-ranking US general would elevate him to the status of a working class hero.

A few months later in Dallas he would achieve that notoriety.