Oswald, Lee Harvey (1939–1963)

US assassin. He shot and killed US president John F Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. Two days later he himself was shot by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, while in police custody.

Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. After a troubled youth, he served in the US Marine Corps (1956–59). Renouncing his US citizenship, he lived in the Soviet Union (1959–62), then returned with his Russian wife to live in Texas. Although official reports stated that Oswald acted on his own, the assassination has long attracted conspiracy theorists who have claimed that Oswald was part of a much larger plot to kill Kennedy.