Marina Oswald Porter

Marina Prusakova was born in Molotovsk, Russia, on July 17, 1941. She lived with her mother and stepfather until 1957 when she moved to Minsk where she lived with her uncle, Ilya Prusakova, who worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Marina worked as a pharmacy worker in a local hospital and in February 1959 met Lee Harvey Oswald at the city dance hall. Six weeks later the couple were married. Oswald soon became disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union and in June 1962 he was given permission to take his wife and baby daughter to the United States. The Oswald family settled in Fort Worth, Texas; later the family lived in Dallas and New Orleans. Oswald became active in left-wing politics and joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Marina later claimed that on April 12, 1963, Oswald attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a right-wing political leader, in Dallas. In September, 1963, Marina Oswald moved to Dallas to have her second child. Lee Harvey Oswald apparently traveled to Mexico City where he visited the Cuban Embassy and attempted to get permission to travel to Cuba. His application was turned down and after trying to get a visa for the Soviet Union he arrived in Dallas in October 1963. Marina and her two daughters were living with a woman named Ruth Paine. Oswald rented a room in Dallas and, with the help of Paine, found a job at the Texas School Book Depository. On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly assassinated President John F. Kennedy in downtown Dallas. Shortly after, Dallas police officer J. D. Tippet approached a man, later identified as Oswald, walking along East 10th Street. A witness later testified that after a short conversation Oswald pulled out a hand gun and fired a number of shots at Tippet. Oswald ran off leaving the dying Tippet on the ground. Oswald ran into the nearby Texas Theatre where he was arrested after a brief struggle with police. While being interrogated by the Dallas Police, Oswald denied he had been involved in the killing of Kennedy. On November 24, 1963, while being transferred to the county jail, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby and died a short time later. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Marina Oswald was taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and kept at the Inn of the Six Flags Hotel. Threatened with deportation, she agreed to give the authorities all the information she had. Some of this information was later used by the Warren Commission to suggest that her husband was the lone assassin. In 1965 she married Kenneth Porter, with whom she has a grown son; they divorced in 1974. She has resided in Dallas, Texas, for many years and has appeared in numerous documentaries on the Kennedy assassination. In 1989, Marina became a naturalized United States citizen. She now contends that Oswald was innocent in the assassination, though she has not formally recanted any of her Warren Commission testimony.