thank you for joining us on newsmaker sunday. th been 50 years since president kennedy has been gunned down in dallas. what would possess lee harvey oswald to take the life of the and what effect did lee harvey oswald's up bringing, his mother particularly on the making of an assassin? it's a subject of a fascinating new book by steven. the gunman and his mother, lee harvey oswald and margaret harvey oswell the making of an assassin and steven is our guest. an award winning writer, journalist, editor and film maker. and a valley resident. >> great to be with you.

lee harvey oswald is an enigma. as you peeled away the onion on this guy, there are reasons he ended up in dealy plaza on a sixth floor at the book spos suppository. what started you on your journey of trying to understand his mother, margaret who is a seminal figure in the book. >> i began to look at the litera really about his -- about the conspiracy theories that always swirled around lee harvey oswell and people were never paying attention to him. and i got to focused on lee harvey and his relationship with his mother actually from a mihm project i was involved in about 20 years ago which was during the time that lee harvey oswald was in first finland and then the soviet union and it started

know -- didn't know much about his time in russia in those years before he went there leading up to the last year of his life which is when he left the soviet u.n.gen and a year -- union and a year later in dallas. >> so much curiosity of the russian connection. we are in the throes of the cold war when kennedy was killed. it was tensions were high. cuban missile crisis and everything that people read so much into that that he must been some type of double agent. he was working with the soviet union and we can throw up pictures of lee harvey oswald and we will. this is a guy who never fit in. he was always trying to figure out his place in the world. >> 245eus pretty deeply disturbed kid. and it started at an early age when he was four years old his family had moved six times and

quickly twice. the other husband lee harvey's father died two months before he was born. she was obsessed with money. she was always in a hurry to move on to the next location. she was domnearing. she was combative. >> was she running from something? >> that's an interesting question. i don't know that there was something legal that she was running from, but she couldn't get along with people. >> here she is, right here. and this was around the time of the assassination and that's his wife marina and he had one daughter and another, right? >> rachel and -- >> so two kids and they were kind of living apart at that point. lee harvey oswell and his wife marina when everything happene in dallas. >> the last year when she came from the soviet union back to america with him and there was

months, their relationship and his life was on a downward spiral. it was deteriorating significantly. and they were having a harder and harder time getting along. he was having trouble keeping a job. so they had serious money problems. and when they were together he was abusive. he was beating her up. by the way he was beating her up like he used to beat up his mother. >> he beat up his mother. >> he used to hit his mother there were times he would be with other people and pull knife. i mean, with his half brothers -- >> that's john pick. >> that's right. so he had a history from a early age of abusive and really violent behavior that his mother always excused. >> the million dollar question i guess is that there are a lot of kids in this exact situation who don't go on to become assassins. don't go on to try to take the life of a president.

>> well, again, i dig into the relationship with the mother. she -- from the age that he was 16 she was convinced -- well, he didn't need to go to school any more because he knew everything. she was convinced that he was somehow very special even though he lacked a lot of the basic skills to function in life and she had very grandiose ideas about how special her boy was and he so i think he hungered to be somebody importunate world. oftentimes when you look at these cases of assassins which you also often come back to, there is something about them where they want to be able to have some impact as a kind of response for all of the things that have been missing in their lives. >> i remember this interview. it's fascinating with oswald's brother robert who was raised in the same environment but robert seems very well adjusted.

the oldest brother was seven years older. they lived somewhat separately. they had more separation. lee was connected to the mother. the more was more involved with her. so she had in a way more chance for impact. she communicated very specifically that these kids were a burden to her. she communicated that they are orphans and in fact when they were very young when lee wasn't even two years old put all three of them into an orphanage. i can't afford to take care of them. i can't handle the burden of taking care of them and off they went. the older brothers in my estimation were better adjusted because they had more opportunity to have other mentors, other men in their lives, other adult. >> they had their father in their life a little longer. >> that's true. >> oswald strikes me as a guy who was never happy with where

wanted to be in the soviet union and defected. then in the soviet union he becomes disillusioned with communism. >> very quickly. that's so right. went there and he was going to be part of the workers revoluton this much was going to be a better world where there wasn't poverty or racism and there weren't going to be real problems and that turned out not to be the case. he imagined that they were going to welcome him like a hero. they sent him off to minx quickly and t was trouble and maybe not as capable as they wished. >> that's a very interesting point because then when you get into -- and we will circle back to this the soviet connection with oswald, as i think vincent point out beautifully in his book, case closed, this is the last guy you would want to be involved in any kind of -- any kind of conspiracy to kill a president because he was -- he

did slit his wrists. unstable. unreliable, a flake. >> argumentative, never liked telling him what to do. >> this is not a guy the soviet soviet union would want. >> nor the cia who would have a grand conspiracy to draw on and be able to mastermind this operation. you couldn't trust what he was going to do from one minute to the next. >> let me take you back. this is a piece i did back on the 50th anniver kennedy assassination. taking you back to dallas. this is tape number ten. just want to play a little snippet of this to take people back in time to that horrible moment. and the president of the united states. >> we remember it mostly in black and white. through history books, photographs and tv coverage. but these are real places that you can still see, touch and feel a half a century later.

official, president kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. central standard time. the home where lee harvey oswell lived with his wife and two children still stands in iferring. the bedroom where oswell slept. the bathroom where he got ready that day. exactly as it was. what did oswald think when he saw his reflection in themirror that down the hall the garage where he kept the rifle used to kill the president. >> it's hard to believe the murder weapon was right there. >> yup, it's just standing in the place again like i mentioned before it's just standing in the place where historic events occurred. >> home largely undisturbed through the years. it will be open for public tours. just like the texas school book des totory. -- depository.

emotion. the museum occupies the sixth floor where oswald fired on the motorcade. the corner winner recreated exactly as it was on novembe 22nd. the murder scene time. the grassy noll, people clutching cameras as dishe that day. mccawb white xs where president first struck and mortally wounded. >> going back there when you look at the texas school book des toory and you go -- depository when you look how difficult the shot was -- >> you are led to the believe that the difficulty of making the shot with a slow moving car as if it was a quarter of a mile or some sort of great distance, when you are up on that sixth floor you can see the distances was pretty short and looking.

>> he got off three that we certainly that evidence of the warren commission shows. for oswald to end up on that 6th floor that day so much has to happen leading up to that. one of the things is his time in the marines. how did his mother feel about him joining the marines? >> well, from a pretty young age he said he wanted to go into the military. >> why? >> both of his brothers had been in the army so i think he looked at them as sort of a model of a way he wanted to get away. he wanted to do something to show if you say his monthly side and like every other experience it didn't go well. he was bullied by a lot of the other people. he used to show off how he learned a little bit of russian so they were calling him -- they wanted to in a way treat him as different and -- >> she would challenge his superiors.

and it didn't end well because one, there was still unclear exactly what happened. he was shot, perhaps the gun drop, perhaps he did it on purpose to try to sort of get off of the day's work. he was always looking for a way out from what was going on. i don't think he was trying to kill himself at that point, but there is again the sort of evidence of him. >> gaming the system. >> and not being able to stick to whatever his >> when he leaves the marines, that's before he goes to russia. >> very close. and he got out of the marines because his mother had sent a note to the military brass saying that i'm so sick, i need my boy. i need him to come home and help me. >> were they working working in consort together? >> i think he wasn't happy. he didn't like his mother medaling in his life. >> she was doing it on her own. >> he wasn't urging her to help

he ends up dishonorably discharged? >> he was dishonorably discharged it was after he went to the soviet union and renounced his citizenship and defected to russia at that point all of the other procedures sort of kicked in and he was sort of dishonorably discharged. >> give me a time line, steven, on that. where are we now in oswald's life. >> october 1959. >> four years befor >> yeah. yeah. october 59 is when he went off to finland where he had to get a visa. from there it was five days before he got to moscow. he was in the berlin hotel. he was there for ten days trying to be able to get a visa to be able to stay because he was only there or a short tourist visa. and that didn't work out and so he attempted suicide.

why thecally and sort of nursed what were fairly superficial wounds. >> this is a cry for help. a cry for help and a desire to find a way somehow to stay. but the russians didn't really want this problem which is why they sent him off to minsk where they sentham -- >> you are banished in minsk. radio factory where he was cutting metal with a it wasn't sort of part of the dream he had in his mind it wasn't very long after he got there that he was already trying to figure out how to i get out of here. >> can we show the book again q. steven has written a fascinating book, the gunman, his mother, marring reet oswald and the making of an assassin. this book came out a year after the anniversary. >> it came right out around the anniversary. >> are you surprised as we go to break -- are you surprised how

known about this guy. >> you know it's known if you dig. i think what's remarkable to me is that if you ask most people was lee harvey oswald in russia they wouldn't know. i think because it's a matter of common knowledge people haven't gone back and looked at him very closely. >> you think it's vitally important. >> because if you want to understand how he ended up in dallas and how he ended up in the plaza, you need to go back and look at the trajectory of the boy's life. think i have seen him before. he looks like his brother who is a american historian who has written many books about the presidency this reboth authors, accomplished authors. back with steven and his work on lee harvey oswald and the interesting curious relationship

53 anniversary of the murder of john f. kennedy, president kennedy in dallas on november 22, 1963. steven is our guest this week on newsmaker sunday. he has authored the book, the gunman and his mother. the making of an assassin. a fascinating book because you delve into what made this guy. what led him to that point where he would climb those stairs at his workplace and kill the

to those earliest years and see a kid that moved six times by the age of four. moved 20 times by the time he was 17 and left the family's home there was a great deal of instability and when he was with his mother it was contentious most of the time and he absorbed really her grudge -- she carried this sort of deep sense of the world is against me. she was always battling with people. she was always fighting with people. i think she moved a lot because she was landlords and neighbors and it was never working out. there was this kind of constant argumentative environment that was an every day reality combined with the sense of we are special people and we are people capable of something great in this world. >> and nobody is getting it. nobody is getting how great we are. >> right. >> oswald you believe even at a young age he fashioned himself a

?that's exactly right. >> did he fancy himself as potentially a historic figure? >> that's exactly right. >> delusions of grandeur. >> absolutely this was not a stupid guy. he intelligence when he was 13 years old and he had gone into custody because he had been truant for quite a period of time and there was kind of detailed analysis by a psychotherapist and social workers and probation officers and so on to look at this kid where they found a emotionally disturbed and deeply troubled kid with passive aggressive tendencies and fant eases of -- fantasies of omnipotence and when asked are you -- do you enjoy being more with boys or girls and he said i don't like people. this was a kid who -- >> a loner. this gets into that whole loner that these assassins fall into. why is that? >> at 13 years old you could see it, there were red flags and in

said single mother, the kid was alone, when you coming home from school, i don't want you pausing and talking to anybody. i don't want you playing. i want you coming straight home and lock the door. i don't want you to deal with anybody. >> when you see that picture, he business how old? >> i think he is younger at that point. he might be as young as eight. >> the sneer is so unmistakable. it's the same look that you saw in the dallas jail. >> i think it's the same look you could find on his mother. if i the two of them were sort of a piece. and this sort of visions of grandiosity that they had to be somebody importunate world was contradicted with this kid who didn't finish school. didn't really develop any school skills. didn't have sort of the basic tools to survive a normal life. >> i want to take you -- let's show the mug shot of lee harvey

clip. i want you to look at that picture and tell me what you see because there is a -- i may be reading into this, but there is a little bit of -- there is an arrogance and a self-satisfaction that, yeah, i'm the guy. and do you think he was enjoying being paraded around as he was in front of the cameras? his moment in the spotlight. >> this was his moment. you know it's interesting, cho have said more that i did it or i didn't do it o he very -- to me he very specifically refused to sort of say what had happened. i think it's because he wanted to sort of sustain the mystery and keep this sort of picture of himself as somebody that others were going to have to explore who was this special person. >> he wanted the mystery to continue. >> i think that he dids in in confession in dallas. they never got a confession out of him and i suspect other people do and you may share this, that if he confesses, kind

this prolonged the exposure and the interest. >> when his brother came and met him in the jail cell and he was looking at him closely and waiting for some information from him and lee said something to the effect of, like, don't keep digging into my eyes you aren't going to see anything there, brother. it was a coldness and cut off and robert would say later, that wasn't lee this was somebody who was lik it was cut off. i think this was a kid that this was his moment and -- look, the events swirl and he got caught up into something that now he is faced with the reality of what had happened and -- you know i think if we had more time to sort of see this play out, i think we would have seen a lot more of a kid who was falling to pieces. not one who was just strong in those first minutes.

properly and nothing was done? disor they not quite identify. or did they not quite identify the issues with this kid. >> i'm going back to when he was a 13-year-old boy. he was in new york. he went into the school, 48 out of 64 school days. he was truant and he was riding around in the subway. he was going to the zoo. not wanting to be there. and he was taken into custody by truant officers. he was put in a juvenile home and they had time then to sort and interview him by psychiatrists and social workers and so on. and i brought a sort of a brief summary and this was from the psychiatrist who at the age of 13 looked at him and said, lee has a vivid fantasy life turning around the topic of omnipotence and power. he has a personality pattern disturbance with skitsoid features and passive aggressive

the key. an emotionally quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of a really existing emotional isolation and deprivation. lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self-involved and conflicted mother. >> is that his mother. >> there you are. >> that's what he inherited. >> what they said then is he needs psychiatric, psycho therapeutic care and by the way so does his mother. and rather than him help he needed at that point, his mother didn't like these stranger medaling in his business, found a way to pull him out of there and take him away, out of the jurisdiction of the new york -- >> and then it begins. >> right back to louisiana. >> and the problems follow you. >> he never got the help he needed. >> we have to take a break. fascinating with the author of the gunman and his motheram lee harvey oswald, margaret oswald

great read.

back with the author of the gunman and his mother... we've only got a minute left. do you believe lee harvey oswald acted alone? >> i do. 53 years later please tell me who is the other shooter. there is a lot of research that's been done and there is

we have. if you look at this man and the story of his life you really can say there is a reason why he was there and why he was looking to do this. >> 30 seconds. he did not particularly have a beef with john kennedy. why kennedy? >> he liked the president. >> i think it was just an opportunity -- >> crime of opportunity. >> yeah. this was his chance. he was on a downward spiral this was his chance to be a person in history. >> he did have some issues with john conley back a before that. >> he did. >> you don't think he was shoot agent conley. >> no. >> he was shoot agent the president. >> he was going for the thing that would give him the biggest glory. >> steven, great to see you, good luck with the book. the book is called the gunman and his mother, lee harvey os well, marringer why the oswald. we will see you next week on newsmaker sunday.

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it's shaping it's shaping up to be a it's shaping good morning. it's shaping up to be a busy weekend for holiday travel. don't be surprised if you get stuck in traffic. aaa saying it may be the busiest weekend in nearly a decade. a blast of temperatures drop in the high country. we were following a winter weather advisory in arizona. >> and with all of the ride sharing services available, police say nobody has any reason to drink and drive. we will tell you about the dui task force out in full force last night. well, good sunday morning. we begin with a weather alert here on your sunday morning there are some very big change in the forecast. i want to get right to the maps and let you know what we are dealing with. take a look at this this is a