Motive - The pathological are seldom logical

To convict someone of murder it is not necessary to establish a motive, you only have to prove the facts of the murder and the accused role in it, without reasonable doubt. Having said that there are few district attorneys or crown attorneys that would go to court without at least attempting to establish a motive. The reason that the law allows for this is that the law recognizes that it may not always be possible to get inside of a killers thoughts and understand why they commit ed the crime. The law allows that there are even circumstances when it is permissible or excusable to take a human life.: war, self defense or when the killer meets the legal definition of insanity. The insane have, it is recognized, diminished capacity to differentiate between right and wrong. The law recognizes also that a person can have a different outlook on the reasons for killing a person but still be culpable for the murder. Such is the case with sociopaths and psychopaths. They have a different view of killing than do normal adults but they still understand that what they do is wrong and that there are consequences to there actions when they get caught.
It is my contention that Lee Harvey Oswald fits into this category. He fully understood that killing Kennedy was wrong but for his own reasons he still went ahead and did commit murder. If he had lived to stand trial I am sure that his lawyers would have argued diminished capacity just as I am sure that no jury in the United States would have found him not guilty by reason of insanity. We can never say with certainty what went through Oswald's mind in the time leading up to the assassination, but we can follow the chain of events that lead up to November 22nd and we can make some inferences and judgements of our own based on the best indicator of future behaviour and its motives, part behaviour. Even had Oswald lived it is doubtful that anything he may have said would ever have been much help in understanding why he did it. His psyche was so flawed and his judgement and reasoning so skewed that he was incapable of explaining his own actions as he and normal people do not share a common frame of reference. In essence we don't speak the same moral and ethical language as did Oswald so we could not understand his reasons nor he our contempt for his actions.
One trait that is common among sociopath killers is a lack of empathy. They are unable to relate to their victims and how the loss will affect others. Oswald showed many signs of having a lack of empathy, throughout his life. Many childhood acquaintances regarded him as cold and aloof. He formed few friendships and spent many hours alone. Employers, landlords, coworkers all noted this about him. None of them felt they knew him on a deep personal level. His conversation was distant, not engaging and many found they would lose interest and drift out of the conversation. Oswald's lack of empathy is evident in his comment after shooting Constable Tippit, "Poor dumb cop" or "Poor damn Cop" . Arresting officers noted how calm and cool he seemed when arrested. Conspiracy theorists would claim this is a sure sign of innocence yet even an innocent man would be panicked by the events. It is however, a sure sign of the sociopath who has no real attachment to the events he has caused.

People have often remarked about the shots fired that day and how the last shot was the most accurate of the bunch. They reason logically that with the panic and adrenaline flowing they feel that there is no way that the shots would get more accurate. As a former gun collector and target shooter I can tell you that the second and third shots are almost always more accurate as you mentally make the small adjustments for windage and idiosyncrasies of the weapon and scope. They who feel that he should have been less accurate use their framework of understanding. They think "if I was shooting at another human being especially the president of the United States I would be nervous and I would get more nervous as I proceeded." What they ignore is that Oswald was a sociopath, he did not have the same sensations, the same thoughts were not passing through his mind, he was dispassionate, removed almost like watching himself do the deed. His accuracy like mine when shooting paper targets would get better with each shot. We must be careful when trying to put thoughts into Oswald's mind that we remember, the pathological are seldom logical. They have reasons for their actions, they are not however the reasons a normal person would have.

To understand the motive we must understand some of the evidence. Consider the backyard photo and the other photos in the notebook Oswald kept while planning the Walker killing. Who would have such photos taken? Especially if you were about to kill a right wing General? The photo shows Oswald with the rifle and pistol and copies of two different communist newspapers. It neatly sums up the whole case against him. The conspiracy theorists would argue that it was a clever fake made up by the CIA or FBI or Castro or Kruschev or somebody. The only problem is that Marina took the photo with their cheap camera. The negatives are accounted for (for some of the photos not all) and Oswald himself gave George DeMohrenschildt a copy of the photo (with Marina's writing on the back, the "Hunter of Fascists" photo. There is absolutely no doubt of the authenticity of the photos. Oswald had the photos taken to establish himself as a legitimate communist and the type of person that the Soviets or Cubans would want to have as a citizen. Oswald left the photos behind after the Walker attempt in order to establish his place in history should he be caught and killed. Had he succeeded he would have taken the photos to the Cuban or Soviet embassies as proof of his commitment to the cause. In his twisted mind he saw this as a badge of accomplishment. The thought that killing a high ranking anti-communist would give him refugee status in the communist world. The first defection had not gone well, he was treated with suspicion and once his net worth had been established he was sent into virtual exile as a threat, not an asset. He had little or nothing to offer the Soviets in terms of intelligence (in either sense of the word). he had wanted to go to university in Moscow. He felt that doing this thing would assure him of an honoured place in Soviet society. Had he succeeded in killing Walker I doubt very much if the Soviets would have even allowed him to enter their borders he would have been way to hot to handle.

Oswald had always sought to belong to something. He was a classic wanna be. His childhood friend William Wulf said "...he seemed to me a boy that was looking for something to belong to. I don't think anybody was looking for him to belong to them."If Oswald had escaped capture he must have thought that he could write his ticket in the communist world. Oswald's conversion to Communism is an interesting expression of his character in itself. According to Oswald he became a communist early perhaps at the age of fifteen. People who do not fit in often take this to extremes and do things that make them even more separate from others. An example of this would be the young killers at Columbine High school who took to wearing trench coats to make them more separate from their peers. Since Oswald did not fit in he could do something that would explain isolation. If he became the one thing that would most isolate him in the United States, becoming a communist, he could then justify his isolation. He was no longer isolated because of any flaw in his character or any psychological problem, he was isolated because of his political beliefs. Although he read a number of the most famous works of communism, acquaintances from his days in the USSR would comment that his understanding of communism was limited. He himself would call the Soviet system flawed and that it was not a true representation of communism. During his time there he did not fit in either. His charade pf being a communist only worked when it was abstract, when it became concrete the same old social problems reared there head and he was isolated even further because of his poor knowledge of the Russian language.

Oswald saw the killing of Kennedy or Walker or Nixon or anyone else in a position of authority in the U.S. as his ticket out of obscurity and isolation. He did not want to be caught, he wanted to be free but to be able to make substantiated claim to the act that he had done. He needed to have the time to get away, hence the alias and the fake ID. Stll, he needed to be able to prove his success as a "Hunter of Fascists". To most of us his actions seem illogical. Why have the photo taken, why rent a mailbox that could so easily be tied to his real identity? He knew he would have to leave the rifle behind and he knew that it would eventually be linked to him but I am sure he never dreamed how fast events would move after he pulled the trigger.

One of the things that convinces me the most of Oswald's guilt is one of the most esoteric. take a close look at the booking photo I used in the first chapter. The one showing a bruised Oswald. Is this the patsy of the conspiracy theorists? Does he look scared? Some conspiracy theorists would have us believe that Oswald was totally innocent and knew nothing even of the plot. Look at this face! Had he been shaved and not showing a scar from his brief scuffle with authorities in the Texas theatre I would say that this was a college graduation photo. He looks smug, smiling like he just accomplished some achievement of monumental proportions. Watch the clips of his police station interviews. He is cool, calm and in control. He does not have the appearance of an innocent man who would be baffled, wondering what was happening, scared to the core. He is not sweating, nor is he rambling or incoherent as he would be if he were insane. He behaves just as you would expect a person to behave who was a sociopath, cool, detached and of course he is smiling, other than being caught everything else is going according to plan. If you do get to see the interview watch carefully his reaction when he is told he is being charged with the Kennedy assassination. He visibly gulps, to that moment he thought he was charged only with the Tippit killing he now knows that there is no hope of bail or of escaping. Briefly his demeanour slips and he shows a flicker of concern. He never showed any sign of emotion when killing Tippit but he does have a reaction when things go badly for him. These judgements are, of course subjective, but they are telling. They further lend credence to Oswald's guilt. One more link in the chain.

Next chapter - the evidence, the Warren commission drops the ball.