Of the four American presidents who've been not serving their term, John F. Kennedy's death is the
one that haunts people the most.
It's not just the grisly, public manner in which he was passed that confounds the crowds.
There's also the matter of the rampant conspiracy theories, apparent official cover-ups, and
eerie missing links that still exist around the attack on the 35th President of the United
States.
"The President of the United States is gone."
Here are just some of the many things that don't add up about the JFK passing.
South of the border
Despite having one of the nation's most recognizable names, there's a lot we don't know about Lee
Harvey Oswald.
We still don't know why he did it, and we certainly don't know what he was up to in
Mexico City during the weeks leading up to the assassination.
Mexico City in the '60s was to Cold War spies what Miami beach is to spring break bros.
It's been called "the spy capital of the Western hemisphere."
Cuban agents, Soviet moles, and CIA operatives all rubbed shoulders there.
Oswald was a defector who'd tried to pledge himself to the USSR.
So, he partly used his time in Mexico to attempt to secure a Soviet visa.
But the day he visited the Soviet embassy just so happened to be the day the CIA's camera
broke, so we have no pictures of him there to flesh out the details.
Coincidence?
And while he's often referred to as the lone guy now, Oswald wasn't sipping on margaritas
solo in Mexico City.
He was spotted at a party which may have featured Cuban diplomats joking about how useful it'd
be if Kennedy were not here.
Considering the CIA disparaged June Cobb, the spy who told them about the possible fiesta
plot, however, it's hard to know if that was the source of his scheme.
Speaking of the government's shady lack of interest ...
Without a trace
Perhaps the strangest thing about Oswald is that he didn't spend the run up to Kennedy's
passing being tailed by the CIA, FBI, or any other department with an acronym for a name,
despite being a known defector.
Oswald had gone to Moscow in 1959 and renounced his American citizenship.
When the Kremlin rejected Oswald's overtures, he tried to not himself.
This desperate act was enough to bag Oswald a temporary stay in the USSR, so the KGB shipped
him out to Minsk to work in a radio factory.
Oswald wanted more than to just help make stereos in Eastern Europe, though.
He later claimed he'd offered the Soviets information on America's U2 spy planes.
A few years later, Oswald moved back to the States with his wife and daughter.
But instead of being flagged and interrogated by intelligence officials, he was largely
ignored and left to waltz around town like he wasn't some traitor to the nation.
Secret Service slump
The Secret Service is known for being quick on their feet during assassination attempts,
but when it came to JFK's passing, they were curiously slow to get to their Eagle.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the POTUS-mobile had its running boards
retracted, so his protection officers were farther away than usual.
But there were still about five seconds between the first shot, which hit JFK in the neck,
and the second shot which struck his head and ended his time.
A high-speed response might have saved the president, but instead, no one seemed to move.
Driver William Greer didn't take evasive action.
Paul Landis, following the Kennedy car, didn't jump onboard and shield the president with
his body.
The only Secret Service guy that can be seen jumping onto the car in the footage is Clint
Hill, who was part of the First Lady's security detail and was fulfilling his duty to protect
her.
It wasn't until after the second shot that feet seemed to really hit the pavement in
pursuit of the President's doomed ride.
Postmortem morbidity
The bizarre aspects of the Kennedy passing didn't end with JFK's actual demise.
If anything, things only got weirder.
The body was taken to Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital, but it barely got through the doors
before a fight broke out over who got to slice and dice it.
The local coroner was a guy named Earl Rose, who thought he had dominion over the autopsy
since JFK was taken in Texas.
When Rose tried to physically block the Secret Service from the corpse, he was thwarted by
Kennedy's detail, who took the body back to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
But that's not where the autopsy drama ended, either.
JFK's autopsy doctor, James Joseph Humes, admitted to failing to remove and weigh the
organs, per protocol, and what's worse, is that he destroyed the original report.
Humes claimed he hand-copied and burned his original report to stop the bloodstained document
from being a source of morbid fascination, but it was still a completely perplexing move
on his part.
On top of that, the woman who developed the autopsy images that are preserved in the National
Archive claimed that the ones she delivered were different than what can be seen now.
The photo paper type was different than what her lab used, too, which suggested that they
came from a different printing session altogether.
And those weren't the only documentation oddities that happened.
Disappearing evidence
If you've ever watched a detective drama, you'll know that long before the good cop-bad
cop routine commences, a tape recorder is turned on and plopped on the table.
But for some reason, that wasn't the case when it came to the interviews done with Lee
Harvey Oswald after his arrest.
In fact, there are almost no official notes of Oswald's questioning by Dallas police or
the FBI.
The only record of Oswald's interrogation exists in the form of notes made by the two
interviewers, which are themselves rough and incomplete.
And what's even crazier is that some of the notes weren't discovered until the 1990s when
they were found among the belongings of a deceased officer and donated to the public.
The notes are very clear on one thing, though.
Oswald repeatedly declared his innocence, claiming that the images of him posing with
the rifle used to hurt Kennedy were faked.
Other documents surrounding the investigation that have since gone missing include a note
from Oswald himself, an intelligence file on him, and the Secret Service records pertaining
to a trip JFK was supposed to take in Chicago a month before his passing.
Perhaps most curiously, the tissue samples of JFK's brain, which were under lock and
key at the National Archives, were stolen from their storage container a few years after
his demise.
Talk about a head-scratcher.
Document dump
What documents do remain intact regarding JFK's going bye bye may become public sooner
than later.
In 1992, George H.W. Bush signed the Records Collection Act, which sets the date
for all JFK records to become public as of October 26, 2017.
In July 2017, some of those files came through early, including one that indicated that by
the mid-1970's the CIA no longer believed the story that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone
actor, despite maintaining that position publicly.
Who knows what the rest of this document drop will reveal.
One thing's for sure.
With all of these bizarre question marks looming over the incident and subsequent investigations,
it's really no wonder JFK's passing is still the most conspiracy theory-riddled
case in American history.
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