After Oswald's death, his palm print was found on his rifle butt, indicating that it was he who did the shooting. Some investigators charge, however, that a palm print could have been transferred from his hand to the rifle butt after Oswald's death. This could have been one of many illegal efforts to tie Oswald to the crime. The official investigation concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as the lone gunman. Using a Mannlicher Carcano carbine with a telescopic lense, Oswald fired three shots from the six floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Two bullets hit the President: the first one in the neck and the second and fatal one in the head.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in mystery if ever there was one. Evidence of varying reliability has linked Oswald to virtually every group that had a reason to want Kennedy dead. In the years before Kennedy's death, Oswald worked as a radar operator at U-2 spy plane bases, defected to the Soviet Union and married the niece of a KGB colonel. On returning to the US, Oswald propagandized for Castro's Cuba out of a New Orleans building he shared with an ex-FBI agent trying to overthrow Castro. In the fall of 1963, Oswald moved to Dallas where he had FBI contacts, got a job in a Texas Book Depository and was accused of killing the president.

Oswald worked in New Orleans from April to October 1963. He was a close associate of one of Marcello's top aides, a man named David Ferrie. Oswald was also the nephew of Dutz Murret, another Marcello associate, who set Oswald up in New Orleans (the mafia trusts family). A third Marcello associate arranged bail when Oswald was arrested in August for a street disturbance. Carlos Marcello, the mob chief of New Orleans who also controlled Texas, vowed revenge when RFK had him deported and dropped in a Guatamala jungle. In 1962 Marcello was quoted as saying in reference to the Kennedys: "The dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail. You must cut off the dog's head." He also said one could get away with it if one found "a nut to take the blame."