Depending on the length of his trial and appeals, maybe not. The last execution in Texas pre-Furman was in 1964. Certainly there would have been unusual pressure to carry it out in Oswald’s case.
From what I can gather (can you tell I’m a nerd for this case?!), it wasn’t that he “changed” clothes so much as Oswald went home and got a jacket to put on over his shirt (and apparently retrieved his revolver).
From here:
“Approximately 15 minutes before the shooting of Tippit, Oswald was seen leaving his roominghouse. He was wearing a zipper jacket which he had not been wearing moments before when he had arrived home. When Oswald was arrested, he did not have a jacket. Shortly after Tippit was slain, policemen found a light-colored zipper jacket along the route taken by the killer as he attempted to escape…
Westbrook walked through the parking lot behind the service station and found a light-colored jacket lying under the rear of one of the cars. Westbrook identified Commission Exhibit No. 162 as the light-colored jacket which he discovered underneath the automobile. This jacket belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald. Marina Oswald stated that her husband owned only two jackets, one blue and the other gray. The blue jacket was found in the Texas School Book Depository and was identified by Marina Oswald as her husband’s. Marina Oswald also identified Commission Exhibit No. 162, the jacket found by Captain Westbrook, as her husband’s second jacket.”
Bugliosi’s summary has him going up to his room just long enough to retrieve his jacket and revolver.
It’s only 42 minute total between the JFK shots and the killing of Tippitt. The working description on the radio has no description of clothing.
I’d also forgotten that Oswald shot Tippitt several times, following it with an execution shot to the temple.
(Fellow JFKA nerd; I’ve been trying to post too many things from slightly dusty memory here and it shows.)
What did James Earl Ray do right that he wasn’t caught for two months? Apparently he didn’t have a real plan for the killing, so I doubt he thought about how he would get away either.
He got out of town in a hurry. He also had money and a car. People saw him run out of the hotel where he had shot King from, but they didn’t know who he was. He was an escaped convict and used to life on the run. I don’t think it’s been clearly established where he got the money from, but most likely from his family. Many people believe he had help making his way to Canada and getting a fake passport there.
I’ve always found it bizarre that Marina Oswald (I know that’s not her current name, but I can’t be arsed to look it up) contends that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill JFK. Apparently she really believes it.
If anyone, anywhere, was exposed to more information on the topic than that poor woman, I really don’t know who it would be.
I think he did it. I’m really quite sure that he did. I think it’s the most logical explanation. Frankly, I think people who buy into the conspiracy theories on the JFK assassination, maybe they just like conspiracy theories; and the idea that something really convoluted and covert happened that day instead of a frustrated nutjob like LHO acting alone is a more pleasant belief to hold, for whatever reason.
Hey, mods? We really need a big, red, flashing BULLSHIT! smiley for these threads.
Sorry, Sarabellum, but I don’t know where you got that info. Marina was a key source of information about personal aspects, thoughts, private actions and so forth and she was completely honest and forthcoming throughout the initial investigations and later. (Just possibly, being a Russian immigrant whose immigration partner had just killed the President and been killed, and the possibility of being deported, crossed her mind.)
“No one knew Oswald as well as his wife, Marina, and after the assassination, Marina [cooperated with a writer for a joint 659-page biography]. [She] came away [from visiting him in jail] knowing he was guilty. She said she saw the guilt in his eyes.”
- Bugliosi, p. 962
If she later expressed doubts, as I have dim recollections of her doing, it’s no different from families of perps convicted by means/motive/opportunity, physical evidence, eyewitnesses and DNA samples who swear he was a good boy and must have been framed. It’s the human/family way.
Porter, FWIW
She told the Dallas police in '63, the Warren Commission in '64 and the House Select Committee on Assassinations in '78 that Oswald was guilty.
She told Oprah in '96 that he was innocent.
No idea what happened in the intervening years to make her change her opinion.
Try to imagine the deluge of conspiracy nuts she had to endure over the years. It wouldn’t surprise me if she found a way to profit by cooperating with them. She probably also didn’t mind giving her daughters some glimmer of hope that their father wasn’t an assassin.
ETA: Oswald’s brother never changed his belief that Oswald was guilty.
Yup, she really is just a victim in this matter, she had nothing to do with the assasination. Her various statements don’t have any significance, and the motivations you provide are explanation enough.