Who Killed John F. Kennedy? Seven Suspects Who Aren’t Lee Harvey Oswald

Published November 12, 2023
Updated March 12, 2024

Clay Shaw, The Only JFK Assassination Suspect Ever Put On Trial

Did Clay Shaw Kill Jfk

Public DomainClay Shaw, the only person ever put on trial for the JFK assassination.

David Ferrie wasn’t the only person that Garrison suspected. The D.A. also claimed that a New Orleans businessman named Clay Shaw had something to do with the JFK assassination — and Garrison even took Shaw to trial.

As The New York Times reports, Garrison believed that Oswald, Ferrie, and Shaw had worked together to assassinate the president. With Ferrie and Oswald dead, Garrison focused his energies on prosecuting Shaw. But the 1969 trial was widely seen as both a circus and homophobic.

Shaw was known to be gay, and Garrison had speculated at one point that the Kennedy assassination was a “homosexual thrill killing.” Indeed, much of Shaw’s trial was focused on Shaw’s tight-fitting pants as well as the five leather whips that had been discovered at his home (Shaw claimed that the whips were merely props left over from Mardi Gras.)

What’s more, Garrison’s parade of witnesses hardly inspired confidence. The New York Times reports that they included a heroin addict, an insurance salesman who had to undergo hypnosis before taking the stand, a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Julius Caesar, and a man who checked his own daughter’s fingerprints before letting her in the house.

Clay Shaw At Trial

The Times-Picayune ArchiveClay Shaw following his arrest as an accused JFK assassin in 1967.

In the end, it took a jury less than an hour to acquit Shaw.

“I was arrested and charged with what must surely be the most shocking crime of the century, of which I had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever,” Clay Shaw later said of the experience. He called his trial “one of the seediest and shabbiest episodes in American judicial history.”

That said, Garrison wasn’t entirely wrong in his suspicions that Shaw was hiding something. It was later revealed that Shaw was indeed involved in a top-secret CIA organization called the Domestic Contact Service (DCS), in which Shaw reported any shady business dealings to the CIA.

And Garrison ultimately believed that the answer to the question “Who killed JFK?” lay with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Who Killed Jfk
History Uncovered Podcast
Episode 96: Who Really Killed JFK?
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, the Warren Commission determined that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president — but many believe that there's more to the story.
author
Kaleena Fraga
author
A senior staff writer for All That's Interesting since 2021 and co-host of the History Uncovered Podcast, Kaleena Fraga graduated with a dual degree in American History and French Language and Literature from Oberlin College. She previously ran the presidential history blog History First, and has had work published in The Washington Post, Gastro Obscura, and elsewhere. She has published more than 1,200 pieces on topics including history and archaeology. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
Based in Brooklyn, New York, John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of expertise include modern American history and the ancient Near East. In an editing career spanning 17 years, he previously served as managing editor of Elmore Magazine in New York City for seven years.
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Fraga, Kaleena. "Who Killed John F. Kennedy? Seven Suspects Who Aren’t Lee Harvey Oswald." AllThatsInteresting.com, November 12, 2023, https://allthatsinteresting.com/who-killed-jfk. Accessed July 26, 2025.