Timeline of the John F. Kennedy assassination
This article considers the detailed timeline of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President of the United States who was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on 22 November 1963.
A presidential visit to the state of Texas was first suggested to John F. Kennedy by his vice president, Texas native Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Texas native Governor John Bowen Connally, Sr. while all three men were together in a meeting in El Paso, Texas on June 6, 1963.
President Kennedy later decided to embark on the trip with three basic goals in mind: the president wanted to help raise more Democratic Party presidential campaign fund contributions. He wanted to begin his quest for re-election in November, 1964 (which most agree he would have won) and, because the Kennedy-Johnson ticket had barely won Texas in 1960, President Kennedy wanted to help mend political fences among several leading Texas Democratic party members who appeared to be fighting politically amongst themselves.
Events before November 22
President Kennedy's trip to Dallas was first announced to the public in September 1963.The exact presidential motorcade route was announced to the public a few days before November 22.
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Main article: Detailed timetable of the assassination
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During the third week of October, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald started working a seasonal, full-time job at the Texas School Book Depository as a $1.25-per-hour manual laborer filling customer orders for books. Oswald had secured the job after a referral by Ruth Paine, with whom Lee’s wife, Marina Oswald, and the Oswald children were living, after a marriage separation. Ruth had also separated from her husband, Michael Paine, at about the same time.
November 22: Before the assassination
On Friday, November 22, 1963, at 11:40 am CST, Kennedy, his wife Jacqueline, and the rest of the presidential entourage arrived at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, aboard Air Force One after a very short flight from close by Ft. Worth. The motorcade cars had been lined up in a certain order earlier that morning but, just prior to Kennedy's arrival, the order of the vehicles was changed. The original schedule was for the president to proceed in a long motorcade from Love Field through downtown Dallas, and end at the Dallas Business and Trade Mart.
The motorcade was scheduled to enter Dealey Plaza at 12:25 pm, followed by a 12:30 PM arrival at the Dallas Business and Trade Mart so President Kennedy could deliver a speech and share in a steak luncheon with Dallas government, business, religious, and civic leaders and their spouses.
The presidential motorcade traveled nearly its entire route without incident, stopping twice so President Kennedy could shake hands with some Catholic nuns, then, some school children. Shortly before the limousine turned onto Main Street a male ran towards the limousine, but was thrust to the ground by a Secret Service agent and hustled away.
At 12:29 PM CST, the presidential limousine entered Dealey Plaza after a 90-degree right turn from Main Street onto Houston Street. Over two dozen known and unknown amateur and professional still and motion-picture photographers captured the last living images of President Kennedy.
Just before 12:30 PM CST, President Kennedy slowly approached the Texas School Book Depository head-on, then the limousine slowly turned the 120-degrees directly in front of the depository, now only 65 feet (20 meters) away.
November 22: Assassination
The assassination began when the presidential limousine had completed the slowing turn, and glided down the three-degree inclined Elm Street to a point level with the southwest corner of the depository. President Kennedy was targeted and shot at for an estimated 6 to 9 seconds. He was hit with at least two bullets, and was killed when struck in his head.
During the assassination the limousine slowed from over thirteen miles per hour to only nine m.p.h., when, about two seconds prior to the president being struck in his head, the limousine brake lights were witnessed and filmed being illuminated as the limousine driver had turned and was facing President Kennedy. At least two shots are theorized to have struck President Kennedy, and, at least, one shot struck Governor Connally. A witness, James Tague, was also slightly wounded on his right facial cheek while standing 270 feet (82 meters) in front of where Kennedy was first struck in the head.
Immediate aftermath: Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was confronted by an armed Dallas policeman, Marion Baker, in the depository second floor lunchroom only 74 to 90 seconds (according to a Warren Commission time recreation) after the last shot. Baker first testified that the shots he remembered hearing as he approached the depository originated from the "building in front of me, or, the one to the right". The Warren Commission theorized that Oswald had traveled a, minimum, 346 foot distance from the sixth floor easternmost window, and hid an 8 pound, 1938-Italian made Mannlicher-Carcano, 6.5 millimeter rifle equipped with a four-power scope along the way. The rifle was reported discovered by a Dallas police detective at 1:22 PM balanced upright having been placed sometime sitting balanced on its bottom edges. After being discovered the rifle was photographed before being touched. In the second floor lunchroom Oswald was identified by the superintendent of the building, Roy Truly, then released. Both Baker and Truly testified that Oswald appeared completely "calm, cool, normal, and was not out of breath in any way." In Baker’s written statement he originally wrote that Oswald already had a Coca-Cola in his hand, but during his testimony, and sometime during the 5 months after he first testified, the Baker statement about Oswald holding a Coca-Cola was lined-out, and Baker’s name initials appeared above the lineout.
According to the Warren Commission, when Oswald was next seen, by a depository secretary on the first floor, he was carrying a soda bottle as he left the Texas School Book Depository at approximately 12:33 PM through its front door.
Authorities did not seal the Texas School Book Depository until 12:39 or 12:40 pm. Before that, policeman, detectives, witnesses, and others were first directed by persons to search the grassy knoll, parking lot, and railroad yard from 12:30 to 12:39 pm. The Dealey Plaza immediate area streets and blocks were never sealed-off either, and within only nine minutes of the assassination, photographs show that vehicles were driving down Elm Street, through the crime scene kill zone.
At 1:00 pm, after a bus and taxi ride (a taxi ride that he was witnessed offering first to an elderly woman), Oswald arrived back at his boarding room and according to his landlady, left at 1:03 or 1:04 PM when she last saw him standing and waiting at a bus stop.
At 1:15 to 1:16 pm, Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit was shot dead 0.85 miles from Oswald's rooming house. Eleven people either witnessed Oswald shooting Tippit or fleeing the scene. Two witnesses stated they saw another man near Oswald at the killing site. The closest witness to the shooting (only 34’ away) first refused to identify Oswald as the Tippit killer. After the Tippit murder Oswald was witnessed traveling on foot toward the Texas Theatre.
At about 1:35 PM Johnny Calvin Brewer, who worked as a manager at “Hardy's Shoe Store” nearby the “Texas Theatre,” saw Oswald turning his face away from the street and duck into the entranceway of the shoe store as Dallas squad cars sirened up the street. When Oswald left the store Brewer followed Oswald and watched him go into the Texas Theater movie house without paying while the ticket attendant was distracted. Brewer notified the ticket taker, who in turn informed the Dallas Police at 1:40 pm. Inside the theater, several witnesses saw Oswald shift to several different seat locations to sit next to different patrons. Speculation about Oswald’s behavior in the Texas Theater, deemed peculiar at best, has been theorized as an attempt to meet with an unknown (to Oswald) contact in order to obtain documents and funds to facilitate Oswald’s flight from prosecution.
Almost two dozen policeman, sheriffs, and detectives in several patrol cars arrived at Texas Theatre because they believed Tippit's killer was inside. (minutes beforehand they had raided a nearby library on a similar, but mistaken report.) When an arrest attempt was made at 1:50 PM inside the theater, Oswald resisted arrest and, according to the police, attempted to shoot a patrolman after yelling once, "Well, it's all over now!" then punched a patrolman. A policeman was witnessed to immediately yell, "Kill the president, will ‘ya?!!"
At 3:01 PM Dallas time, only an hour after Oswald was taken into the Dallas jail, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo to his assistant directors in which he stated, “I called the Attorney General at his home and told him I thought we had the man who killed the President down in Dallas, at the present time.”
Immediate aftermath: Kennedy
Meanwhile, the situation at Parkland Hospital had deteriorated. Even as the press contingent grew, a Roman Catholic priest had been summoned for President Kennedy so that his Last Rites could be performed. Doctors worked frantically to save the president's life, but his wounds were too great. At 1:00 pm, after all the heart activity had ceased, a priest administered the last rites and President Kennedy was pronounced dead. Personnel at Parkland Hospital trauma room # 1 who treated the president observed that the president's condition was "moribund," meaning, he had no chance of survival upon arrival at the hospital. "We never had any hope of saving his life," one doctor said. The priest who administered the last rites to the president told The New York Times that the president was already dead upon arrival at the hospital and had to draw back a sheet covering the president's face so that the sacrament of extreme unction. Governor Connally, meanwhile, was soon taken to emergency surgery where he underwent two operations that day.
The news of Kennedy's death was made public at 1:38 PM CST. CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite passed along word of the assassination. The television transmissions were first interrupted at 12:40 PM CST. At this time, the top-rated "As the World Turns" was airing across the country. As Nancy Hughes (Helen Wagner) turned to Grandpa to discuss a domestic matter, the CBS News bulletin card was abruptly placed on the screen. After the first notice was read that President Kennedy was wounded, the affiliates went back to "As the World Turns," at least for a couple of minutes. Walter Cronkite read several more news reports and then, around 1 PM CST, the affiliates joined Cronkite in the news room. After news footage was shown of a luncheon in Dallas where Kennedy was supposed to speak, Cronkite announced on air:
"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official--(reading AP flash) President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM central standard time, 2:00 eastern standard time, some 38 minutes ago. Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded. Presumably, he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the thirty-sixth President of the United States."
A few minutes after 2:00 PM CST, and after a ten to fifteen minute confrontation with cursing and weapons-brandishing Secret Service agents, President Kennedy's body was illegally removed from Parkland Hospital and driven to Air Force One. The body was removed before undergoing a forensic examination by the Dallas coroner, and against Texas state laws (the murder of the president was a state crime, and legally occurred under Texas jurisdiction).
Flight back to Washington
Once back at Air Force One, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President of the United States of America at 2:38 PM CST.
At about 6:00 PM EST Air Force One arrived at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington D.C. where a casket was loaded into a light gray US Navy ambulance for its transport to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for an autopsy and mortician's preparations. When Jackie Kennedy stepped off the plane, her pink suit was stained with her husband's blood. All that long afternoon, the widow objected to leaving her husband's body.
Oswald: Charges laid
At about 7:00 PM CST Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with "murder with malice" in the killing of police officer J.D. Tippit. At 11:36 PM Oswald was charged with assassinating President Kennedy "in the furtherance of a Communist conspiracy."
On November 24, 1963, in a memo J. Edgar Hoover wrote for the record, Hoover stated, "The thing I am most concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."
On a November 26, 1963 memo from Courtney Evans, the Assistant FBI Director (Mafia Section), to Assistant to the FBI Director, Alan Belmont, the F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover hand-wrote in the memo's margin, "Just how long do you estimate it will take? It seems to me we have all the basic facts now."
On December 9, 1963, only 17 days after the assassination, the FBI report was turned over to the Warren Commission theorizing that only three bullets were fired during the assassination; that the first shot hit Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit Kennedy in the head, killing him. The FBI theorized that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all three shots.