Category: JFK Assassination

• The Three Tramps

  A theory claiming that three scruffy men detained near the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination were not ordinary transients but covert operatives, often identified in later retellings as E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, or other intelligence-linked figures. Because photographs of the men circulated before their identities were settled in the public mind, they became one of the most famous mystery-image branches of the JFK case.

• The Federal Reserve Theory

  A monetary theory claiming that President Kennedy was killed because he signed Executive Order 11110, which allegedly threatened Federal Reserve power by permitting the Treasury to issue silver certificates and thus bypass private central-bank control of U.S. currency. The theory usually presents the order as a direct challenge to banking elites and interprets the assassination as the defense of monetary sovereignty held outside democratic reach.

• The Babushka Lady

  A Dealey Plaza theory centered on an unidentified woman wearing a headscarf who appears to be filming or photographing the assassination even as other witnesses dive for cover. Because she was never definitively identified in the official record and no confirmed film from her camera ever surfaced, later theories cast her as a Russian spy, intelligence observer, or covert witness who recorded the true killers.

• The Badge Man

  A photographic theory claiming that the famous Mary Moorman Polaroid of the Kennedy assassination captured the faint image of a man behind the grassy knoll fence, possibly in a police uniform, firing a weapon. The bright spot on the chest was interpreted as a badge, and the figure became known as “Badge Man,” one of the most discussed photo-based gunman claims in Dealey Plaza research.

• The Fidel Castro Counter-Strike

  A theory that Fidel Castro or Cuban intelligence arranged President Kennedy’s assassination in retaliation for repeated U.S.-backed attempts on Castro’s life and ongoing covert warfare against Cuba. The theory usually points to the documented anti-Castro plots, Oswald’s pro-Castro activity and Mexico City episode, and the possibility that Cuba chose to answer assassination plans with one of its own.

• The Mafia Contract

  A theory that organized-crime bosses ordered the assassination of President Kennedy because Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy aggressively pursued them after the 1960 election, despite claims that mob figures had helped secure political support for JFK. In many versions, the contract theory overlaps with anti-Castro operations and covert contacts already shared by the Mafia and U.S. intelligence.

• The CIA Revenge

  A theory that the Central Intelligence Agency, or a hardline faction within it, killed President Kennedy in retaliation for the Bay of Pigs disaster, the firing of senior officials, and Kennedy’s threat to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” In this telling, the assassination was both institutional revenge and a defensive move against a president seen as a threat to covert power.

• The LBJ Plot

  A theory asserting that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson orchestrated or facilitated the assassination of John F. Kennedy to preserve his political survival, avoid being dropped from the 1964 ticket, and stop corruption scandals from reaching him. The theory usually links Johnson to Texas political fixers, oil interests, and operatives who could shape both the killing and the post-assassination transfer of power.

• The Grassy Knoll Shooter

  One of the central theories of the JFK assassination, holding that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire the fatal shot alone and may have served as a patsy while a second assassin fired from the grassy knoll area behind the picket fence in Dealey Plaza. The theory relies on eyewitness statements, shot-direction impressions, acoustic arguments, and the geometry of the head shot as seen in films and reconstructions.

• The Umbrella Man

  A Dealey Plaza theory claiming that a man seen opening a black umbrella on a sunny day near the motorcade was not an eccentric bystander but an operational participant in the assassination of President Kennedy. Depending on the version, he either signaled the shooters, marked the kill zone, or carried a disguised weapon such as a poison-dart device designed to weaken or immobilize the president before the rifle shots.