President John F Kennedy arrived in Dallas on the morning of 22 November 1963 for a two-day political swing through Texas. The presidential motorcade route through downtown Dallas had been published in the Dallas Morning News on 19 November. The presidential limousine was a 1961 Lincoln Continental SS-100-X with the protective bubble top removed because of clear weather.
The motorcade entered Dealey Plaza from Houston Street at approximately 12:29 CST and turned right onto Elm Street, passing the Texas School Book Depository. At 12:30 CST three rifle shots were fired in approximately eight seconds.
The first shot missed. The second shot hit Kennedy in the upper back and exited his throat, then hit Texas Governor John Connally in the right back. The third shot hit Kennedy in the head. He slumped into Jacqueline Kennedy’s lap.
The limousine accelerated to Parkland Memorial Hospital approximately 6.4 km away. Kennedy was pronounced dead at 13:00 CST. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One at 14:38 CST.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Dallas police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, at the Texas Theatre at 13:50 CST after he had killed Dallas patrolman J. D. Tippit at 13:15 CST. Oswald was a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and returned in 1962. He was employed at the Texas School Book Depository.
Police recovered a 6.5 mm Carcano rifle on the sixth floor of the Depository. Ballistics linked the rifle to two of the three Plaza shots; the rifle was traced to a mail-order purchase by Oswald under the alias “A. Hidell.”
Oswald was shot dead in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters at 11:21 CST on 24 November 1963 by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby during a prisoner transfer broadcast on live television.
The Warren Commission
The Warren Commission — chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren and reporting in September 1964 — concluded that Oswald, firing alone from the sixth-floor Depository window, had killed Kennedy. The Commission’s conclusions have remained contested in successive reinvestigations. The 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” on disputed acoustic evidence later refuted by the National Academy of Sciences.
Files relating to the assassination held by the National Archives were released across 2017-2023 under the 1992 JFK Records Act. No conspiracy has been established by the released documents.