JFK Assassination Investigation: Who killed President Kennedy?

A History Mystery lesson your students will love!

Who killed President Kennedy? Was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone assassin or is there good reason that so many Americans still question the official story?

In this JFK Assassination Investigation, students become the investigators. Instead of simply being told what happened on November 22, 1963, they examine the evidence themselves and decide how strongly it supports the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy and acted alone.

This is the kind of lesson that can get students locked in. They’ll pore over photographs, maps, witness accounts, ballistics evidence, Oswald’s movements, the “magic bullet,” Jack Ruby’s killing of Oswald, and more. As each new evidence file is revealed, students record what it shows, question what it doesn’t prove, and decide whether it strengthens or challenges the government’s case.

And just when they think they’ve reached their verdict, they discover that Congress reopened the investigation more than a decade later—with a surprising conclusion of its own.

Students will investigate:

• The crime scene at Dealey Plaza
• The rifle found inside the Texas School Book Depository
• Oswald’s famous backyard photographs
• Evidence from the sixth-floor “sniper’s nest”
• Conflicting eyewitness accounts about where the shots originated
• Evidence connecting Oswald to an earlier assassination attempt
• The controversial single-bullet or “magic bullet” theory
• Oswald’s actions immediately after the assassination
• The murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit
• Video evidence of Oswald claiming that he was “just a patsy”
• Jack Ruby’s murder of Oswald

Throughout the investigation, students develop historical thinking and evidence-analysis skills without it feeling like another history worksheet. They must analyze primary and secondary sources, distinguish strong evidence from weak evidence, corroborate information across sources, create their own questions, and they try to 'solve the case.'

At the end, students complete a Warren Commission Report Card, rating how strongly the evidence supports each of the Commission’s major conclusions. Then they deliver their own verdict and defend it with specific evidence from the investigation.

What does the evidence actually support?