Lee Harvey Oswald methodically planned the murder of Edwin Walker. Oswald knew that Walker would return home to 4011 Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas sometime after the end of his widely-publicized cross country speaking tour on 3 April. On Sunday evening 7 April, one week after his wife Marina took the infamous photo, Oswald took his sniper rifle and surveilled Walker’s house. Seeing no activity, he hid the rifle at the railway track site a half mile away that he had photographed the previous month. On the evening of 8 April, he surveilled the house again, this time confirming that Walker had returned. On 9 April, Oswald relaxed on what he expected would be his last day with his family.
The afternoon of 10 April, Oswald wrote a note in Russian with eleven instructions for Marina. He left these instructions on his desk without saying a word to her and then slipped out of their duplex. She was used to his unexplained absences but that night as it got late she started to worry. When she found the note around 10 PM and read the first ten instructions, she must have thought he had left her. She didn’t know what to think when she read the eleventh instruction, however, which begins, “If I am alive and taken prisoner, the city jail is at the end of the bridge.” (Below is page two of Oswald’s note.)
Meanwhile, Oswald had collected his sniper rifle, waited till dark, and furtively positioned himself in the alley behind Walker’s house. He spotted the former general working in his office on the first floor at the window farthest to the left. Walker was a sitting duck, in direct view just forty yards away. At 9 PM, Oswald took careful aim at Walker’s head through his sniper scope, fired one shot, and saw Walker’s head fall forward as if he had been hit. Oswald wasted no time in escaping the scene of the crime on foot.
After hiding the sniper rifle at the same site by the railway tracks, Oswald took buses back to his duplex on W. Neely Street six miles away arriving at 11:30. A frantic Marina showed him the note and demanded an explanation. He explained that he had just killed Walker. Fearing the police could arrive at any minute, she asked what he had done with the rifle. “I buried it,” he said.
Oswald turned on the radio to hear whether the killing had made the late news. When there wasn’t any report, he threw himself in bed and slept through the night. Marina was terrified and did not know what to do.
The next morning, Marina found Oswald listening to the radio news. “I missed,” he said, disgusted. “It was such an easy shot.”
What saved Walker was the record breaking heat that day in Dallas. He had turned on the air conditioner in his office and closed all the windows. Oswald’s bullet glanced off the frame of the closed window, and deflected slightly. The Dallas police chief told reporters, “If it hadn’t of hit that, it would have hit him right in the head.”