1964: The Warren Commission Declares Lee Harvey Oswald the Lone Gunman in the Kennedy Assassination
On September 27, 1964, the Warren Commission delivered its report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, concluding after a ten month inquiry that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in firing the shots that killed the president in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
The commission, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren and formed by executive order of President Lyndon Johnson, found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, and determined that Jack Ruby likewise acted alone when he shot Oswald dead two days after the assassination while Oswald was in police custody.
The report’s single bullet theory, used to explain the wounds suffered by both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally from one shot, became the most disputed element of the findings and fueled decades of public skepticism and rival conspiracy theories that persist to this day.
