On April 10, 1963, just seven months before he killed President John F. Kennedy, the impenetrable assassin Lee Harvey Oswald crouched behind a fence in an upscale neighborhood of Dallas and pointed his rifle at the window of ‘an ultra-conservative brand named Edwin. Walker, a former general in the United States Army.
Oswald fired, but the bullet fell from the window sill and missed Walker’s head by an inch. The Dallas Police Department’s investigation was cold, and Oswald, previously reported by the FBI, escaped further scrutiny. The weapon Oswald fired at Walker – a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle purchased under a false name – was the same one that would claim the life of President Kennedy on November 22 of the same year.
Walker rages against Kennedy and communism
Former Dallas political activist former Major General Edwin Walker sits with a cup of coffee as he chats with reporters the morning after a bullet fired into his house nearly killed him. Unknown at the time, the assailant was Lee Harvey Oswald, eight months before killing President Kennedy.
Bettmann / Contributor
In the early 1960s, Dallas, Texas was a “stronghold of political conservatism,” the perfect place for General Edwin Walker to launch his post-military career, says Bill Minutaglio, journalist and co-author with Steven L. Davis of Dallas 1963.
Walker resigned from the military in 1961 after being reprimanded for calling Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman “pink” and for sharing right-wing political leaflets with his subordinates. Walker arrived in Dallas as a man on a mission, to oppose what he considered the three worst threats to America: socialism, communism and John F. Kennedy.
“In Dallas, Walker started thinking about running for governor and he even considered running for president,” Minutaglio said. Walker appeared on the cover of News week (“Thunder on the right!” Was the headline) and gave free rein to the editorial pages of the anti-JFK Dallas Morning News.
In 1962, Walker was charged with “insurgency and seditious conspiracy” (but not convicted) after appearing at violent protests at the University of Mississippi after the school was forced to admit black student James Meredith as part of a federally mandated desegregation.
“This is the plot of the crucifixion of the Supreme Court’s anti-Christ conspirators in their refusal to pray and their betrayal of a nation,” shouted Walker during the riot, in which 35 Federal Marshals were shot and two people killed.
Walker also believed Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist and accused the entire civil rights movement of being “pro-Kennedy, pro-Communist, and pro-socialist.”
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Oswald’s motive: a devotion to communism
According to Walker, one of the many ways in which JFK was a weak, even treacherous president, was his policies towards Cuba, where Fidel Castro ruled over a communist nation in America’s backyard. Walker not only wanted the US military to sack Castro, who came to power after a 1959 revolution, but openly called for the assassination of the Communist leader.
Lee Harvey Oswald lived minutes from Walker in Dallas in a rented duplex he shared with his wife Marina and their baby daughter. Oswald met and married Marina in the Soviet Union, where Oswald briefly attempted to defect and live out a communist fantasy as a Soviet factory worker.
Back in Dallas, Oswald worked as a typographer and read Communist newspapers in Russian in the break room. He would have been more than familiar with a figure like Walker, who was one of the loudest anti-Communist voices in Dallas and the country as a whole.
“The hypothesis, and this is only a hypothesis,” says Minutaglio, “is that Oswald, who genuinely supported a pro-Cuban movement, saw Walker as a direct threat. Walker was someone who had a lot of connections and authority in worlds Oswald imagined existed.
From what little is known about Oswald and his state of mind in 1963, he was a man with his own mission: to be an “agent of change”, as Minutaglio puts it, for the communist cause. In March, Oswald’s mail-order rifle arrived and he then posed for a famous Marina photo taken of the Revolutionary faithful with her gun. He also had a plan: to kill Edwin Walker.
Lee Harvey Oswald holds a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and newspapers in a backyard in a 1963 photo taken by his wife, Marina. (Credit: Corbis via Getty Images)
“Oswald was that malleable figure who had a hair trigger personality,” says Minutaglio. “He had read about Walker, heard him speak, seen him in person, and Walker’s antagonistic stance on so many things, including Cuba, started a fire under Oswald. For a loner like Oswald, who had a lot of anger, we think a polarizing figure like Walker pushed him into action.
Oswald stakes the walker
For weeks, Oswald carefully planned how he was going to kill Walker. Oswald staked out the narrow alley behind Walker’s house and found the perfect vantage point behind a 5 foot fence. He planned how, once the deed was done, he would drop the gun on nearby train tracks, walk through a park, and take the bus home.
Aside from occasionally complaining about Walker’s “fascism”, Oswald didn’t tell Marina anything about his plot. On the evening of April 10, Oswald left for another of his unexplained errands, but this time he left a cryptic note for his wife listing what she should do if he didn’t come home.
“Send the information about what happened to me to [Soviet] Embassy and include newspaper clippings (if there was anything about me in the papers), ”Oswald wrote. “I believe the embassy will come to your aid quickly to learn everything.”
At around 9 p.m. Oswald was positioned behind the fence outside Walker’s house. He probably couldn’t believe his good fortune. Walker was sitting at his desk doing his taxes, his head perfectly framed by the upstairs window just 120 feet from Oswald’s rifle.
Oswald pulled the trigger and a crack exploded behind Walker’s head. At first Walker thought some rascal in the neighborhood threw a firecracker at his window, but then the career soldier realized what was going on. He grabbed his pistol and ran outside, at which point he noticed blood pooling on his shirt sleeve from the shards of glass and metal from the shattered window.
Dallas Police correctly classified the shooting as an attempted assassination, but their investigation did not reveal any suspects. Oswald retrieved his hidden rifle and likely fumed at the missed opportunity. It was such an easy move, especially for a former Marine like Oswald.
“Without fate and the circumstances, Walker should have been dead,” says Minutaglio.
Could an arrest have prevented the assassination of JFK?
Investigators only discovered Oswald’s involvement in the Walker’s shooting after JFK was assassinated and Oswald was killed at the hands of Dallas businessman Jack Ruby.
When Marina testified before the Warren Commission, she recalled Oswald calling Walker “a very bad man, that he was a fascist, that he was the head of a fascist organization.” She also kept the note Oswald left her, proof to her that he did indeed attempt to kill Walker that April night.
No one can be sure of Oswald’s motive in Walker’s shooting, nor is it clear why Oswald allegedly first targeted an avowed JFK hater to kill the same president a few months later. And then, says Minutaglio, there is the bigger “what if? ” of all.
“Some people have criticized the investigation into Walker’s assassination attempt,” Minutalgio said. “They say if this had been a really thorough and thorough investigation, then Oswald would have been arrested and jailed, and JFK would have survived.”
Unlike JFK, Walker went on to live a long life. He died of lung cancer at his Dallas home in 1993, 10 days before his 84th birthday.
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