Lee Harvey Oswald was being led down a corridor at Dallas police headquarters on the evening of November 22, 1963, when he uttered perhaps the most fateful phrase in the history of conspiracy theories.
‘I’m just a patsy!’ he screamed at reporters demanding to know whether he’d shot dead President John F Kennedy earlier that day in Dealey Plaza.
Two days later, Oswald was himself shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in a moment captured live on television. He could never reveal whose ‘patsy’ he’d been – but there’s been no shortage of suggestions.
The Warren Commission, the official federal investigation into JFK’s killing, concluded in 1964 that 24-year-old Oswald acted alone with no evidence of a conspiracy.
However, the lack of an obvious motive on his part has led to mountains of speculation and conjecture over the years.
Why would a committed Left-winger want to kill a liberal president devoted to civil rights? Moreover, Ruby was a shady character with Mafia links, making Oswald’s death all the more suspicious.
Most Americans clearly believe that the Warren Commission didn’t get to the whole truth, with a major poll last year finding that 65 per cent refuse to believe Oswald acted alone.
So if he was a ‘patsy’, who was really behind the murder?
