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L.H. Oswald claimed he was innocent and didn't kill J.F. Kennedy. There are various theories on what could have happened that day, but I didn't "study" all the evidence and research, so I don't know what really happened.

The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964 concluded that the President was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone and that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. These conclusions were initially supported by the American public; however, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.

Is the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald killed Kennedy supported by factual evidence, or is there reasonable space for some doubt and/or alternative theories?

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    I don't think this can be objectively answered. All the facts that are available are already available and the jury is out. This is more of a discussion type question.
    – going
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 1:20
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    @xiaohouzi79: so why is this question allowed and nobody protests: skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/…
    – Frantisek
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 1:21
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    @xiahouzi79: Questions to which the answer is "we don't know" are explicitly permitted.
    – Patches
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 8:58
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    @rim I made this question much more clear, whilst I believe respecting your original intentions. Although we permit "we don't know" questions, that shouldn't be because the question is not properly posed.
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 11:42
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    @xiaohouzi79: Totally agree, but given our current "bylaws," if you will, it's still okay to ask, and the result is just people being people. The best that could happen now is, "We probably won't know for sure until all associated documents are unclassified, but given what we do know, yes, he really killed him. Here's why." And then have a mod lock it down if the arguments start up. It's not the best system, and maybe we need to amend the overall rules for situations like this (contentious issue flag, not fully answerable flag, etc, I dunno), but it's what we have right now.
    – erekalper
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 12:55

2 Answers 2

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While it's true that the Warren Commission was run in a somewhat hasty manner, I see no reason to doubt its conclusion after reading through the research done since then. Both sides are absolutely obsessive about it, so there is a lot of confusing material to go through. Probably the clearest and most through is the JFK assassination website of John McAdams, a professor of political science.

Many of the doubts come from people finding it hard to believe that only one person fired the shot, based on the details of the crime scene. A rather infamous simulation of the assination, JFK: Reloaded, shows that all of the known details, when put together, are absolutely possible.

The argument I find most convincing is to compare the kinds of motive ascribed to the shooters in each instance. Conspiracy theorists are all over the map when describing why JFK was killed, from getting killed by businessmen because he was working to take apart the Federal Reserve to some kind of Mob hit (Wikipedia goes over all of them). Lee Harvey Oswald's story is more clear. He was a communist who aspired to be a spy for either the Soviets or Cuba, but neither country wanted anything to do with him. Deeply depressed, he plans to assassinate the president, something that was essentially suicide. While there is hardly a large sample size, depression is a common trait when you look at other lone-nut assassins (see Samuel Byck and Dan White).

The definitive answer here isn't "I don't know", it's "The Warren Commission was right".

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    IMHO the single bullet theory is the weakest point of the official theory. However I can not say what really happened. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory)
    – daniel.sedlacek
    Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 14:46
  • @daniel.sedlacek - See the link in my answer, below, if you have doubt about the ballistics and behavior of the bullet(s).
    – PoloHoleSet
    Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 15:47
  • This documentary examines the single bullet theory and confirms it. youtube.com/watch?v=bLBMX0WmMCY
    – ventsyv
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 16:20
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On the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, the PBS show Nova did a "cold case" show about it, applying the modern science, tools, computer simulation and technology to the evidence we know of, and seeing if any of it matches up with the conclusions of the Warren Commission.

They gathered top forensic criminal investigators and applied the techniques. They looked at the type of weapon used, the type of rounds used for the weapon, the behavior of those rounds as they passed through multiple targets (and the shape and manner of wounds that would be created), the used sound sensor hooked to computer software in multiple locations in the area to see how a gunshot would sound and echo to people in various locations, etc etc etc.

What they found was that the "establishment" answer's predictions for how their tests would come out matched up almost perfectly. They confirmed that the conclusions were valid, plausible and were backed by science.

You can watch the whole episode, along with other reference materials about the episode here -

NOVA Official Webiste - Cold Case JFK

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    For people down-voting because forensic science debunks your conspiracy theories, perhaps you should check into the purpose of this particular stack exchange group.
    – PoloHoleSet
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 15:24

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