Marina Oswald Porter is a woman with dual Russian and American citizenship, known for being the spouse of Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine veteran responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
Marina Oswald Porter’s Family Background
Marina Nikolayevna Oswald Porter, born Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova on July 17, 1941, in Molotovsk (Severodvinsk), Arkhangelsk Oblast, in the northwest of the Soviet Union, resided there with her mother and stepfather until 1957. At that time, she relocated to Minsk to live with her uncle Ilya Prusakov, a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, and pursue studies in pharmacy.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a U.S. Marine veteran, entered the world on October 18, 1939, at the old French Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents were MetLife worker Robert Edward Lee Oswald Sr. and legal clerk Marguerite Frances Claverie. Robert, a third cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War I and passed away from a heart attack two months before Lee’s birth. Lee’s elder brother, Robert Jr., served as a U.S. Marine during the Korean War. Lee has a half-brother, a U.S. Air Force veteran, John Edward Pic.
In the spring of 1961, Marina encountered Lee Harvey Oswald at a dance in Minsk, Belarus. Just six weeks later, they married at her uncle’s home, where he worked for Soviet domestic intelligence. In October 1962, they relocated to Dallas, and by the fall of 1963, they were residing with Ruth Paine, a Quaker and Russian language student, in Irving. Marina and Lee became parents to two children: Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald, born on October 20, 1963, and June Lee Oswald, born on February 15, 1962. Following her husband’s death, Marina remarried Kenneth Porter and found employment at an Army Navy Surplus Store in uptown.
Life after the Assassination and Murder
On November 22, 1963, using a mail-order rifle from a window on the sixth floor of the depository building, Lee Harvey Oswald purportedly fired three shots, fatally injuring President Kennedy and injuring Texas Gov. John B. Connally during an open-car motorcade in Dealey Plaza. Two days later, on the morning of November 24, while being moved from a jail cell to an interrogation office, Lee was shot by Jack Ruby, a distressed Dallas nightclub owner, in the Dallas County Jail. Ruby was subsequently charged with murder and sentenced to death. In October 1966, a Texas appeals court overturned the conviction, but before a new trial could take place, Ruby passed away on January 3, 1967, due to a blood clot complicated by cancer.
The Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, investigated President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It determined that Lee Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, finding no evidence of a conspiracy involving Lee or Jack Ruby. Following Kennedy’s assassination, Secret Service agent Jerry Parr protected Lee’s widow, Marina, and his mother until Marina completed her testimony before the Warren Commission.