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The Evidence. In the warehouse, at a sixth-floor window overlooking Elm Street, police found the killer's roost. Remains of a fried-chicken dinner, an empty Coke bottle, and three empty shell cases lay near by. The assassin had stacked book boxes against one wall so that he could not be seen through the window. He had sat on another box. Beneath the outside window, he had placed three boxes that served as a rifle rest. From that he had been able to track the slow-moving presidential car until it got past him, then got off three shots in about five seconds. After he fired, Oswald ran toward the center of the building and down an aisle to a stair well door. There, behind a few boxes of books, he thrust his carbine. He then hurried down the steps — and perhaps because he heard the oncoming foot steps of the motorcycle cop and Superintendent Truly — he ducked quickly into the lunch room.
Though he never got his day in court, and though he denied any guilt, there could be little doubt of Oswald's guilt. FBI agents checked the gun and its serial number, traced it to the Chicago mail-order house and found the order slip. It was a 6.5-mm., Carcano, bolt-action surplus Italian military carbine. It had been sent to an "A. Hidell" at a post-office box in Dallas. That name and box number were found later among Oswald's effects. Serial number records showed that Oswald's was the same rifle that had been found in the warehouse. An autopsy on Kennedy's body produced one bullet that matched the gun. On the floor of the Lincoln, a second matching slug was found. The third was retrieved from the stretcher that carried Kennedy. Ballistic tests proved that Oswald's gun fired the fatal bullets. Oswald's palm prints were found on book cartons near the window, on the wrapping paper that was used for the "window shades," and on the carbine itself. Experts who later test-fired similar carbines agreed that a skilled man could fire such a gun three times in five seconds with practice.
The Motive? But why had he done it? Perhaps it was merely the power of suggestion. Throughout his whole lifetime, Lee Oswald was plainly a man of demonic frustrations and fanaticisms. His idol seems to have been Fidel Castro. In recent broadcasts, Castro called Kennedy a demagogue, a cretin and a member of an oligarchic family. "We are prepared," he declared, "to fight" the U.S. American leaders "should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe." Maybe all Oswald wanted to be was a hero to his depraved hero.