LEE HARVEY OSWALD

UNITED STATES, 1939-63

While conspiracy theorists will likely debate forever the role Oswald played in the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963, the events leading up to that fateful day seem relatively clear-cut. The biggest is that Oswald moved to the USSR in September 1959, shortly after securing his release from the US Marines, where he’s said to have expressed procommunist views. He settled in Minsk where he met his wife Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova in 1961. He returned to the US with his wife and newborn daughter in June 1962, then tried to go back to the USSR, via Cuba, but was declined.