Transcript

How They Did It: 3 Of History's Most Influential Political Assassinations

From Timeline - World History Documentaries · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 50 min · 5,916 words · 79 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "How They Did It: 3 Of History's Most Influential Political Assassinations", an episode of Timeline - World History Documentaries published January 17, 2026 (50 min, about 5,916 words). It mentions 9 people, works and ideas, including James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas, Texas, Memphis, Tennessee, Mahatma Gandhi.

What this episode is about

The content explores three pivotal political assassinations—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and President John F. Kennedy—highlighting their significance in the fight for racial equality, societal reform, and political progress. It examines the motivations and backgrounds of their assassins, portraying them as agents of chaos who violently disrupted movements aimed at fostering hope and justice, ultimately altering the course of history.

Key takeaways

  • When assassins strike, they don't just take a life; they turn hope into a dark, twisted legacy.
  • James Earl Ray and Martin Luther King Jr.: two lives shaped by choice, yet one shattered a nation's dream.
  • Chaos-loving disruptors often target nonviolent advocates, proving that every peaceful movement has its shadows.
  • Gandhi's assassination illustrates how ideology can ignite fatal disillusionment, where radicalism extinguishes reform.
  • History's assassins are often failed dreamers, leaving behind a tragic irony of missed potential and lost ideals.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas, Texas, Mahatma Gandhi
  2. – 10:00: James Earl Ray
  3. – 15:00: James Earl Ray, Memphis, Tennessee
  4. – 20:00: James Earl Ray
  5. – 35:00: Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas, Texas
  6. – 40:00: Lee Harvey Oswald
  7. – 45:00: Lee Harvey Oswald, Texas School Book Depository, Dallas, Texas
  8. – 50:00: Lee Harvey Oswald, Arlington National Cemetery

Notable quotes from "How They Did It: 3 Of History's Most Influential Political Assassinations"

  • April 4th, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, United States. A single shot from James Earl Ray's rifle ends Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign for racial equality.
    about James Earl Ray · at
  • King excelled at school, earning early entry at age 15 to Morehouse College, then onto Boston University, where he studied for a doctorate in systematic theology.
    about Boston University · at
  • Memphis, Tennessee to lead protests supporting black American sanitation workers. Ry goes to Memphis the day before the actual assassination takes place and goes to a motel on…
    about Memphis, Tennessee · at
  • Because of what's happening in India today and because of the fact that Godsay is now being re-remembered by the Hindu right as a patriot that killing Gandhi was a patriotic act on God's part.
    about Nathuram Godse · at
  • He has no job for 2 weeks until the friend of his wife finds out that there's an opening at a place called the Texas School Book Depository. Calls up the foreman there and he says, Yeah,.
    about Texas School Book Depository · at
  • Oswald fled the book depository before police had secured the area.
    about Dallas, Texas · at
  • President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery on November 25th, 1963.
    about Arlington National Cemetery · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • James Earl Ray — Person · Assassin/perpetrator figure; primary narrative focus for MLK assassination · 9 mentions · first at
    The transcript traces Ray’s criminal history, escape, alleged bounty motivation, stalking behavior, and arrest/conviction for killing King.
  • Lee Harvey Oswald — Person · Assassin/perpetrator figure; case study of political/psychological motives · 8 mentions · first at
    Presented as the key to understanding JFK’s assassination; the episode details his background, ideology, and actions leading to Nov 22, 1963.
    Shots from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle takes the life of President John F.
  • Mahatma Gandhi — Person · Assassination victim; exemplar of nonviolent reform targeted by an assassin · 1 mention · first at
    Used to illustrate how nonviolent societal reform can be derailed by political violence; his ideology is also linked to King’s nonviolence.
    Three shots from Nataram Godsay's semi-automatic pistol kills Mahatma Gandhi and any progress for societal reform.
  • Nathuram Godse — Person · Assassin/perpetrator figure; ideological opponent of Gandhi · 6 mentions
    Portrayed as a Hindu nationalist radicalized against Gandhi’s approach and partition-related politics; described as executing the 1948 assassination.

Companies & orgs

  • Texas School Book Depository — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions · first at
    Location where Lee Harvey Oswald positioned himself to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
  • Boston University — Company · Referenced institution · 1 mention · first at
    University where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. studied for a doctorate in systematic theology.

Places & events

  • Dallas, Texas — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    Location where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
  • Memphis, Tennessee — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Location where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
  • Arlington National Cemetery — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Location where President John F. Kennedy was buried.

Full transcript with timestamps

April 4th, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, United States. A single shot from James Earl Ray's rifle ends Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign for racial equality.

He was at the forefront of a movement that changed America. January 30th, 1948, New Delhi, India. Three shots from Nataram Godsay's semi-automatic pistol kills Mahatma Gandhi and any progress for societal reform.

Godsay was disillusioned by Gandhi's insistence on nonviolence. November 22nd, 1963, Dallas, Texas, United States. Shots from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle takes the life of President John F. Kennedy and with him his dream for a better world.

Without understanding Oswald, nobody will understand why Kennedy died. Disruptors of peace take aim against advocates of social change, justice reform, or equal rights. They are agents of discord campaigning for chaos. Loner fanatics convinced of conspiracy, ideologically unhinged, and prepared to kill. With a fatal shot, they turn hope into hate. Assassins, dangerous operators that strike suddenly with brutal consequence, targeting world leaders, politicians, figureheads, bringing chaos and discord to our world, wreaking havoc to upend ideologies.

They can be amateur opportunists, professional killers, or misfits hellbent on fame. Assassins are on a deadly quest to leave a bloody mark, change society, alter the very course of history. 1950s United States. In the aftermath of the Second World War, American pride is booming. It's the age of the nuclear family. Domestic appliances television sets, and chromeplated tail fin Cadillacs. Unemployment is low. Manufacturing high. Science and technology would launch man and machine into space. But it's also an era of deep-seated racial inequality, especially for African-Ameans.

Into this turbulent decade enters Martin Luther King Jr. I think Martin Luther King's legacy is a fantastic one because he was at the forefront of a movement that changed America in the 1950s and 1960s. Not just then, but even today. Born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King grew up in an educated, civic-minded family. King excelled at school, earning early entry at age 15 to Morehouse College, then onto Boston University, where he studied for a doctorate in systematic theology. During this same period, petty criminal James Earl Ray committed a series of robberies and forgeries.

Born March 10th, 1928 in Alton, Illinois, Ray's childhood was the opposite of Kings. The Rays, they had a 100redyear history of criminality. His father was an alcoholic who was in and out of prison.

In the 1930s and 40s, Ray's early life was marked by instability, crime, and trauma. His own mother with nine children was unable to take care of the family. Some of them were put into foster care, eventually taken away from her. His sister burned alive at one point when he was growing up.

His education was dire and future prospects dim. One of his teachers had a report about him in which she described him as repulsive because he was so dirty. So by the age of 13 and 14, he's hanging out with his uncle in a nearby town, going to see prostitutes at 15. And his uncle then goes to jail for throwing acid in his wife's face. This is James Or's upbringing. In 1945, at the age of 17, Ray enlisted with the US Marines. His request to be sent to Germany was approved. He actually had an idea that Hitler and the Third Reich might have been a good idea. It just happened to lose the war. And when he got to Germany, he was very disillusioned about what he saw in terms of how Germany had been ravaged, beaten, and destroyed during the war.

In the Marines, Ry was trained as a lethal killer. He did qualify on the range as a marksman. That means he could essentially hit a 25 cm target from about 150 m eight out of 10 times. He certainly was no slouch when it came to a rifle in his army days.

Though he qualified as a marksman, Ray's military career was far less successful. He gets gorrhea twice, acute cases, he gets syphilis once, and then he's put into the brrig because of drunkenness. He escapes. He's awall. They put him back in and they give him a general discharge.

Those series of petty crimes, robberies, and forgeries caught up with him. He's caught finally in 1955 for the first time. Gets a big arrest and he's sent off to Levvenworth. That's the 3-year prison sentence that you think might straighten him out, but it doesn't straighten him out at all. That critical year, 1955, James Earl Ray was in Levvenworth Penitentiary, and university educated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama the same city where an African-Amean girl, Rosa Parks, refused to vacate her bus seat so that a white passenger could sit down.

In that time in Montgomery, Alabama, this was a crime. Rosa Parks was arrested and fined. Her simple act of defiance mobilized Dr. King and triggered anti-segregation protests which manifest in the Montgomery bus boycott. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became the face of the civil rights movement. While in Levvenworth Penitentiary, avowed segregationist James Earl Ray languished. There was talk inside the prison that there was a bounty on King's Head. That's the type of prison talk that there was. Somebody will pay to get that no good preacher killed. Somebody will pay you 10,000 or 15,000.

Ry used to say, "I would take that money." The Montgomery bus boycott led to the United States Supreme Court ruling that segregated seating on public buses was unlawful. King's popularity as a civil rights leader soared.

His mantra which was nonviolence picked up the idea of what Gandhi had in India that you could have nonviolent demonstrations that you could sit and join arms and wait for the police to carry you off and when they did you didn't try to fight them but you could essentially make your point in a nonviolent method was revolutionary in many ways not just then but even today. They marched. They demonstrated. They picketed in a drive for equality. They planned nonviolent action. But violence erupted often. While King and the civil rights movements made progress through the second half of the 1950s, they also attracted enemies.

In January 1956, an assassination attempt was made when a white supremacist lobbed a bomb at King's home. His wife and child were home at the time. He was not. Luckily, they survived. The explosion caused only minor damage. 3 years later in early 1959, James Earl Ray was parrolled from Levvenworth Penitentiary. He gets out and he goes off again on a series of robberies until he gets caught and this time gets sent to a place called Missouri State Penitentiary in 1960. He gets a 20-year sentence. And he says later, "The one thing I knew when I started serving that sentence is I'd never finish it. I was going to get out."

Through Ray's years of incarceration, Dr. King led rallies across the United States, campaigning against segregation, calling for social, racial, and economic equality.

I have the pleasure to present to you Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While in Missouri penitentiary, James Earl Ray sought freedom. After four failed prison escape attempts, one of which he gets a longer sentence for, he finally manages to escape, hiding himself in the bottom of a bakery truck on a pre-arranged route in a little bakery sort of metal box. April 1967, James Earl Ray, prison escape, was on the run. He goes to Canada. He's been there before, uses a false name, travels around a little bit, makes some contacts, and then he comes back into the United States. He's picking up money somehow illegally to buy a Mustang, which was his dream. And then he drives to Mexico.

In Mexico, Ray created an alias, Eric Stavo Gol, and began dealing marijuana. But soon he returned to the United States. This time to Los Angeles. In LA, Ray took dance classes, had a nose job, and attended bartending school. For the most part, he was staying in flop houses, staying in poor areas of town, and taking these courses to better himself to become either a bartender or some form of what looked like a straight life. But in 1968, society was shifting. Dr. King was calling on black Americans to join him on an anti-poverty march towards Washington.

Suddenly, James Ray was mobilized. In late February and March of 1968, he decides to leave Los Angeles and he takes his Mustang and he starts to drive east and all of a sudden he's at the cities where King is speaking and ends up in Memphis with King in April of ' 68. A map later found amongst Ray's possessions had locations circled where Dr. King might appear. His residential home office church.

What takes Rey to suddenly get on the trail of deciding he's going to kill King? I believe that a visit he made over the Christmas of 1967 to New Orleans to a bar his brother ran, John Ray, is where he became aware of a bounty on King's Head that was being offered by a lawyer in the Midwest for $50,000. The House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was a government reinvestigation of the King assassination in the mid 1970s, also found evidence that that bounty had been offered. With the bounty on offer, Ray stalked Dr. King.

You either believe that he's stalking King or you believe by coincidence he happens to end up in the cities where King's giving a talk like in Selma, Alabama that night and just can't get close enough to King. He goes to Atlanta when King is getting a talk. Ry couldn't get to King in Atlanta, but then learned he was heading to Memphis, Tennessee to lead protests supporting black American sanitation workers. Ry goes to Memphis the day before the actual assassination takes place and goes to a motel on the edge of town. There are some conspiracy people believe he must have been given that information. No, it was on the evening news. King stayed at the same hotel every time. The Lraine Motel.

Assassins are opportunists, but they are also predatory, gathering information, planning their kill. I believe Ry was looking for Kane and looking clearly for the opportunity to kill King. Wasn't as though Ry said, "Memphis is where I will do it." It was the opportunity that presented itself. As King rallied his supporters for a peaceful march, Ry prepared his recently purchased high-powered rifle.

The gun that he bought, the 30 on six, which he then went out and practiced with some, that is capable of literally at 100 m of killing a rhinoceros.

Ray used binoculars to keep watch of the Lraine Motel. And if he leans a little bit this way in the window, he can keep an eye on the Lraine balcony of that motel. And he sees King when King comes out in the afternoon.

Dr. King now lingered on the motel balcony talking with colleagues. And Ry was presented with an opportunity.

When King is on that balcony, Ry then takes the rifle and walks outside of his room. There's one bathroom for all the flops. That bathroom has a tub. That tub has a window in front of it. Ray locks that door and sets up in there. He fires one bullet and it's a devastating shot.

On impulse, Ry abandoned his rifle near the flop house. In his Mustang, he fled the scene, the state, the country, through Canada to London, then Portugal, then back to London. During this time, the FBI identified Ry from Prince on his abandoned rifle. At Heathrow airport about to board a plane for Brussels. James Earl Ray was arrested by Scotland Yard then returned to the United States to face trial.

He's brought in by federal marshals and he pleads guilty to killing King James. He's been a grifter all his life. He's been a guy who pulls off scams and the next day says, "I didn't mean that. I didn't really kill him. I I take that back." And it starts what becomes literally over a 40-year stint of ever wilder stories.

Following King's assassination, riots and civil unrest broke out across the United States. James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years. if he did it for a bounty. He never saw a dime.

He remained incarcerated until his death in 1998. I think that King had an impact that will forever be on the American psyche. He helped this country realize its deep divisions over race and he helped propel the civil rights movement forward at a much faster pace than if he had not been involved.

The favored weapons of choice for an assassin are the gun, bomb, poison, or knife.

Typically, the method of assassination will be dictated by the nature of the target, the nature of security, and the desire for tactical success. The gun is concealable, accurate, and lethal. Most assassins will use a firearm, oftentimes a handgun. The use of a sniper rifle for assassination is mostly a product of Hollywood. The choice of a firearm probably speaks more to maximizing success rather than the relationship to the victim. You're much more likely to kill the target if you use a firearm.

Readily available, guns provide an efficiency to assassination that is hard to beat.

Chaos ensues. The assassin is L. So the choice of a firearm is not only for tactical advantage but also particularly in the United States ease of access to be able to secure a firearm to carry out an attack. Often times attacks on public figures will attempt it to be carried out when they're entering or leaving an automobile cuz that's a very vulnerable type.

Most of the firearms utilized are handguns primarily because they can be concealed to a certain extent as the assassin approaches the public figure. The gun is concealable, accurate, and lethal. It remains the assassin's most favored weapon of choice. When the lives of an assassin and target intersect, peace is disrupted. Gandhi was born into a British ruled India. Crown rule or British Raj controlled an area which covered present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. So Gandhi is probably the most well-known Indian nationalist leader. He was responsible in the period just after the second world war of turning the Congress movement into a mass movement, a movement with popular support.

And he became very well known right around the world for his moral stance that he took in terms of pushing a nonviolent form of resistance to colonial rule. Colonial rule meant that daily life in India was governed by Britain. They controlled the spice trade, shipping ports across the Indian subcontinent, had colonized parts of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, China, and amassed an army of about a quarter million Indian SEO soldiers of Hindu and Muslim descent to protect their interests.

But Indians in the late 19th century were just coming out of a period of resistance. The so-called Indian mutiny uprising of 1857-58 had left legacies which had I suppose persuaded some Indians that the way forward was to put pressure on the British in different ways to introduce political change. Into this was born Muandas Karamchand Gandhi. October 2nd 1869. 20 years later he found himself in London. Gandhi trained as a lawyer in London, went there in 1888 and qualified in 1891. He found his stay in London to be a little bit challenging because being a vegetarian, vegetarianism was not very widespread in those days. But he he he managed to get through. He went back to India and tried to set up a legal practice.

Because that didn't go very well. In 1893, he took on a piece of work for an Indian merchant based in South Africa.

Gandhi worked for the Indian expat community in South Africa. Not only merchants and professionals, but indentured Indian sugarcane plantation workers. He saw their rights were being squeezed by South African authorities.

He went from being a lawyer to being a political figure. So Gandhi in a way joined their ranks but he joined their ranks with very much a kind of political ambition. Returning to India bolstered with political ambition, Gandhi continued to campaign for independence from Britain. His eventual killer Natharam Gods was by then barely 5 years old. He was born in 1910. He was from a Maharashtran Brahmin background. With the rise of Gandhi, that particular group of Maharashtran Brahinss felt that they were being displaced, pushed out by Gandhi's emphasis on nonviolence.

Um, and so I think God say had been, I suppose, born into and grown up in a community that was suspicious of Gandhi, at least his methods and some of his thinking. A clash of ideologies, a loss of faith in Gandhi, the once cherished leader, a rise in nationalist fervor, ingredients to inspire disruptors of peace. By the time Gods had joined the Hindu Mahasapper and then the RSS after that in the early 1930s, he was still a young man. He was only 22 when he joined the RSS. He was growing up during a really important but turbulent time in Indian nationalist politics and certainly he was shaped by his environment and his background.

with possible Indian independence. Godsay and his fellow Hindu nationalists recognize the likelihood that a separate Muslim state may be granted to a population they consider secondclass foreigners. In August of 1946, days of turmoil and rioting erupted. Gandhi on hearing of these riots took himself down to Bengal where he sought to encourage tolerance between these communities that were in conflict. Gandhi was there to sort of try and put a lid on this to stop the violence or at least to encourage you know those perpetrating the violence to cease and to build better relations within what was a very bruised and battered society.

retaliatory attacks, abduction, massacre, sexual abuse, forced religious conversion. Gandhi visited riot hotspots such as Nocali and Kolkata, calling for tolerance, urging nonviolence. India was drenched in the blood of Hindu and Muslim men, women and children. Gandhi committed to a hunger strike. He'd die if peace was not restored.

For somebody like Godsay, there was nothing wrong with a more direct and a more violent approach. So they were really poles apart when it came to the strategy of how to bring about independence. That independence came in 1947 when Lord Mountbatton declared an end to British rule. India was now partitioned. The Muslim population were handed 2/3 Pakistan the remaining smaller portion for the Hindus. Gods was incensed. He blamed Gandhi for ever consenting to the partition.

India had already become a violent place over the preceding decades because of this growth of of communal tension. But partition was intended to put a stop to that. But in fact, what it did was unleash violence on a much more massive scale. The partition saw upward of 14 million people displaced, 2 million dying from violence or disease. Gandhi moved up from Bengal where he'd been in the immediate aftermath of independence and partition. Gandhi had become a little distant from the main Congress leadership and he moved up to Delhi to try to address some of the issues that the refugees were facing and to call for tolerance and understanding.

By January 1948, the situation in Delhi had become very dire and there were huge numbers of refugees. Then Gandhi urged Indian authorities to release an agreed upon financial settlement to Pakistan.

For somebody like God say rather than being the father of the nation and looking after its interests Gandhi was doing and saying things which went against what God say saw as India's interests. At that moment there was a coming together of frustrations on the part of God and his colleagues that resulted in their decision to assassinate Gandhi.

Gods and his co-conspirators including his brother Gapel sought to further their cause by assassinating Gandhi. And what Gods and his conspirators did was that they they threw a grenade into the crowd which dispersed the crowd. The intention was to leave Gandhi exposed and to then kill him. But that plan failed.

But 10 days later, they'd get another chance. The location, Bura House, New Delhi. Weapon of choice, a gun, Beretta automatic. At 5:05 p.m., Gandhi exited Berla House and walked through the garden towards Adas where he conducted daily prayer.

So, as he made his way to the lawn where this prayer meeting was to take place, there were crowds of Indians there and it was on the path that God sort of pushed himself forward. Shots fired. Gandhi was hit. Multiple bullets pierced his body.

India was stunned. I mean I think the world more generally was stunned but yes I think completely stunned. Over 2 million people attended Gandhi's funeral on February 6, 1948.

Gandhi's main legacy was his role in helping to bring about independence in India.

The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere and I do not quite know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, the father of the nation is no more.

After he was arrested, God and some of his colleagues were put on trial, found guilty, and executed a week later despite pleas from two of Gandhi's sons that the execution be commuted to a life sentence. But in 2020, God's legacy is undergoing re-examination

because of what's happening in India today and because of the fact that Godsay is now being re-remembered by the Hindu right as a patriot that killing Gandhi was a patriotic act on God's part.

Gods is now a poster boy for the Hindu right in India. Being remembered and taking space in the pages of history is rarely motivation for an assassin. But disruptors of peace must act for a reason. The United States of America, November 22 1963. Dallas Texas. Political and ideological beliefs, social inadequacies, and psychological trauma can all be motivation for assassination. In President John Kennedy's killer was a confluence of all these factors. Lee Harvey Oswald was born October 18, 1939 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

His father died 2 months before he was born. He had a doineering mother, Margarite Oswald. Lee moved 16 times by the time he was 12. There was never a time that he was settled into anything at school. bit of a bully at school sometimes, other times being picked on. So finally his mother takes him to New York City and that turns into an unmititigated disaster. Lee turns out to be a truent, he won't go to school. Picked up by truent officers, Oswald was sent to Youth House in Manhattan's Lower East Side. There he underwent psychiatric evaluation,

definite traits of dangerousness, potential for explosive aggressive acting out, vivid fantasy life built around omnipotence and power, personality pattern disturbance with skitsoid features and passive aggressive tendencies. conclusion. Emotionally quite disturbed. After the psychiatrist recommended Oswwell be institutionalized and undergo further treatment, his mother decided they must flee New York. Then at age 17, Oswald decided to change his life. He enlisted with the US Marines. Even though he's been subscribing to some left-wing magazines that indicate maybe communism is better than the American way of life, you think, why would he go in the Marines?

Oswald went in the Marines not because he had any love for America or the Marine Corps. He thought it would change his life, straighten it out, get him away from his mother. And his older brother had gone into the Marine Corps and liked it. His time with the Marines was a disaster, unpopular and considered epheminite. Marine training did however provide him with one particular skill. On the rifle range, he was good. He was a sharpshooter, above marksman, 212 on the range. Hits a 25 cm target at 200 m. Eight times out of 10, he's good on the range.

Oswald began to despise life in the Marines and began looking further a field for a righteous cause. And what he plans for his last 6 months until 1959 when he's 20 years old is to be able to get out and defect to the Soviet Union cuz he has decided in his 19year-old mind that if he goes to Russia as a former Marine soldier, they will say, "Le Harvey Oswald, you're a great character. You've come over to the right side." For the first time in his life, he'll have some respect. Respect came easy to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Handsome and well educated, he was born into an elite Boston family. By the time Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union, Kennedy had graduated from Harvard, fought in World War II, and won a Purple Heart, been awarded the Puliter Prize, married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, and was already an upand cominging politician. Kennedy's life had purpose, structure, and meaning. Oswalts did not. His defection to the Soviet Union had not gone as planned. He turned up in Moscow and said, "Here I am. I'm Lee Harvey Oswald. I'd like a permit to stay in the Soviet Union. I'm a dedicated communist. Communism is the best religion." And guess what they said to him? "Nope. We're not going to give it to you.

Denied the right to remain in the Soviet Union, Oswald was brought to a Moscow hotel to await deportation. In that Moscow hotel room, rejected yet again. Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to take his life, but failed. And at that point, the Soviets give him a psychiatric evaluation. The Soviets conclude that he's emotionally unbalanced. Unsure of what to do with Oswald, they sent him to the provincial city of Minsk. Oswald does nothing interesting except he works at a factory. He does meet a young Russian girl at the time, Marina Prova, and he marries her.

But again, Oswald became disenchanted with life. He convinced his wife, now raising their first child, to move with him back to the United States. By June 1962, after nearly 2 years, Oswald was back on American soil. By then, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been president of the United States for over a year. Just months after Oswell returned to the United States, the Cuban missile crisis erupted. Kennedy deployed the US Navy to encircle Cuba, blocking the delivery of Soviet missiles. As the world teetered on the brink of mutually assured destruction, Lee Harvey Oswald started making plans.

In the beginning of 1963, he orders a pistol 38 caliber. And he ordered what's called a Manac Carano rifle, sort of an Italian World War II vintage military rifle that fires a 2000 grained fully jacketed bullet. With rifle in hand, Oswell asked his wife for a favor.

He tells Marina, "I want you to take some pictures of me in the backyard." And he poses with his rifle and Marina takes those pictures. They're the famous backyard pictures. In the spring of 1963, at the urging of Oswald's wife, they left Dallas for New Orleans. Lee Oswald, he decides the new revolution is Cuba. So, he's going to do something for Cuba. He establishes his own organization, Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He prints off all of these little brochures and stands out in the sweltering heat of New Orleans in the summer of 63, handing out more than a thousand leaflets saying, "Join this committee." And guess how many members he gets? Zero.

Then Oswald declared he's going to Cuba. But to get there, he must first travel to Mexico City and apply for a Cuban visa. On September the 26th, when Lee Harvey Oswald is on an overnight bus to take him into Mexico City, the White House announces for the first time that Jack Kennedy is going to be visiting Dallas in November. Before that date, no one knew that Kennedy would be coming to Texas. So, if there's a conspiracy in the assassination of Jack Kennedy and if Lee Oswald's involved, then you have to find out after September 26th where that conspiracy is because beforehand, nobody could have planted Oswald and Dallas and Kennedy together. Oswald intends to go to Cuba,

but his Cuban visa application was denied. If he had gotten that visa, by the way, he would have been in Cuba on November 22nd, 1963. If there was a plot to kill Jack Kennedy, he wouldn't involved Lee Harvey Oswald. But he's turned down by the Soviets and the Cubans. And he comes back to Dallas on October 1st, 6 weeks before the assassination.

Back in Dallas, Oswald began looking for work. He has no job for 2 weeks until the friend of his wife finds out that there's an opening at a place called the Texas School Book Depository. Calls up the foreman there and he says, "Yeah, I've got two locations for some temporary work, one outside the city and one in the downtown location." And gives him the downtown job. That's before president's motorcade is set. His wife Marina, now with their second child, remained living outside the city with friends while he rented a room at a boarding house.

Then an opportunity presented itself. On November 19th, 3 days before the assassination, the Dallas Herald Tribune and the Dallas Morning News published the motorcade for President Kennedy. Oswald retrieved his rifle from the garage of the house his wife lived in. Later, she found he'd left his wedding ring and their life savings behind for her to find. He left their life savings in a teacup and he went off to the Dallas School Book Depository with his rifle wrapped in brown paper that he told his colleague were curing Ross.

Entering the Texas Book Depository, Oswald climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. At noon, they decided to break for lunch. So, all of his co-workers took an elevator down to the second floor where the cafeteria was. He was the only one that remained.

The presidential motorcade made its way through Dallas. Oswald, the highly skilled marine trained sniper, was in position. So, the assassin is following the car and his first shot is the most angled shot because the car is almost directly underneath him. There's a large oak tree. He fires through that at Kennedy and that's the tree through which the bullet hits, deflects and goes out nearly 200 meters, chips a curbstone and wounds a bystander who gets a cut on his cheek. Oswell then has 3 and 1/2 seconds to reccock the gun, aim, and he fires again.

He hits the president this time, but it's a wound the president would have survived. and it's right up in the high neck shoulder. The so-called magic bullet that then hits John Conley. The shooter gets a straight on 5 seconds to try to aim. He fires. It hits Kennedy in the high right rear portion of the head. The president's dead at that moment. Oswald fled the book depository before police had secured the area. And Lee Oswald that I came to understand would have been out in the square in Dallas asking what happened, who shot him, have they caught the assassin? It would have been a moment of history for him.

He made his way back to the boarding house and snatched his 38 pistol. And he was out on the streets again by the time the police were looking for a killer. That's when Dallas officer J. D. Tippet noticed Oswald behaving oddly and approached him. Oswald responded by firing four shots from his 38. Patrolman Tippet was dead in an instant. We have six eyewitnesses at the scene who say that's the man we saw running. Seven more eyewitnesses who see him going down an alley.

Oswald then raced into a movie theater to hide. there. Police eventually arrested him.

Lee Harvey Oswald died from gunshot wounds inflicted by Jack Ruby on November 24th, 1963. Physical evidence put Lee Harvey Oswald at the scene of the crime and linked him to the weapon. Historical evidence showed he was politically motivated. Psychiatric evidence revealed longstanding mental health issues. Yet in the aftermath of the assassination, conspiracy theories have blurred Kennedy's legacy. All

blood and everything. Conspiracy theorists have said, "Oh, the Grassy null, the real gunman was on the grassy null that day. They fired a gun." But the question is, what does the X-rays, the autopsy photos, and the forensics show you, and they show you that whoever shot the president that day only hit him from firing from behind? There was no second gunman that day. This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be waved. When people say he was an innocent pacing, it gets me angry only because it turns history on its head.

You can't even give him the credit for what he finally did. The one successful thing he did in his life was the worst thing he did in his life, but he did manage to pull it off. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the youngest man elected to the presidency, advocated for anti-segregation, racial equality, public service over self-interest, and nuclear disarmament. But his dream of a better world was disrupted in an instant. Only when I got back into the material and looked at the original research and talked to the witnesses and saw the files and saw the psychiatric materials did I realize that you started to get a portrait for the assassin.

Without understanding Oswald, nobody will understand why Kennedy died. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery on November 25th, 1963. Disruptor assassins. They plot, plan, and fantasize. They are also opportunists, wreaking carnage, dismantling hope, destroying a peace process or chance for equality. With a fatal shot, they sabotage the future. Assassins are part of our world, but so too are those who inspire us to dream. I have a dream.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How They Did It: 3 Of History's Most Influential Political Assassinations"?

James Earl Ray, Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy.

What is "How They Did It: 3 Of History's Most Influential Political Assassinations" about?

The content explores three pivotal political assassinations—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and President John F. Kennedy—highlighting their significance in the fight for racial equality, societal reform, and political progress. It examines the motivations and backgrounds of their assassins, portraying them as agents of chaos who violently disrupted movements aimed at fostering hope…

What is mentioned in this Timeline - World History Documentaries episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas, Texas, Memphis, Tennessee, Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How They Did It: 3 Of History's Most Influential Political Assassinations"?

The episode runs 50 min; the transcript is about 5,916 words in 79 timestamped sections.

More from Timeline - World History Documentaries

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.