Marina Oswald's Life After JFK Assassination: The Untold Story

Bridget Carpenter’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel 11.22.63 blurs fact with speculative fiction in brilliantly original fashion, in large part thanks to its authentic characterization of real-life figures such as Lee Harvey Oswald. While the man generally accepted as JFK’s assassin is the highest profile real-life character in the show, he’s far from the only one.

Lee’s wife, Marina, is also taken straight from the pages of history, making for arguably the most intriguing real character in 11.22.63. How Marina Oswald is depicted in the miniseries is based almost entirely on her true story, which is a tale of bravery and extreme resilience in the face of unrelenting hardship.

11.22.63 ends with James Franco’s protagonist seemingly thwarting John F. Kennedy’s assassination in an alternate version of the past, although even in this version Lee Harvey Oswald is fatally shot soon afterwards. In both cases, Marina Oswald is left to pick up the pieces following the death of her abusive husband, who’s also the father of her children.

Marina Oswald's Role In 11.22.63 Explained

Netflix has brought Stephen King’s 11.22.63 richly deserved success a decade after its initial release on Hulu. This irresistible time-travel thriller blends modern American history, exquisite period detail with nuanced character portraits of figures from a small Southern town in the 1960s – both real and fictional.

Like her real-life counterpart, Marina Oswald is a character beset by spousal oppression and alienation from the world around her. An immigrant from the Soviet Union – where she met her husband Lee and gave birth to his first child – Marina has to cope with life in Fort Worth, Texas while speaking only broken English, alongside frequent bouts of domestic abuse.

When she stands up to her husband and takes their daughters to stay with a friend, Marina demonstrates great courage in the face of oppression, and a powerful resolve to make a better life for herself and her children. What’s more, Lucy Fry’s fictional version of Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife becomes a love interest for George MacKay’s Bill Turcotte.

What Happened To The Real Marina After Lee Harvey Oswald Killed John F. Kennedy

Given that Stephen King has shelved plans for a sequel to the original 11.22.63, it’s unlikely that we’re going to see Lucy Fry’s Marina Oswald onscreen again in another TV show. Her story ends with the fateful day that Lee Harvey Oswald took a rifle up to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

In real life, however, Marina was left to reckon with the aftermath of her husband’s apparent actions and subsequent assassination by Jack Ruby, while raising the children she had with Lee. She remains alive to this day.

At the age of 84, she’s still living just outside Dallas, in a home she shared with her second husband, Kenneth Jess Porter, for 59 years. She also had another child with Kenneth.

For decades, she was hounded by the media and members of the public with an interest in her take on Lee’s involvement in JFK’s assassination. She spoke to the press briefly in the months following the event, and testified to the congressional House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 (via History Matters).

In further press interviews in the 1980s and 1990s, Marina Oswald Porter cast doubt on her former husband’s culpability for the assassination of President Kennedy (via CNN). Since that time, she’s become increasingly reclusive, attempting to protect her privacy against continued media and public intrusion.

How Many Kids Marina & Lee Harvey Oswald Had & What Happened To Them

Marina had two daughters with her first husband, Lee Harvey Oswald. Their first child, June Lee Oswald, was born in the Soviet Union in February 1962, and their second, Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald, was born on October 20, 1963, just over a month before the Kennedy assassination.

The two daughters are depicted as babies in 11.22.63, which features Audrey’s birth as a subplot. They’re both alive today, and are skeptical of the consensus that their father killed President Kennedy (via The Spokesman). They’re far from the only ones, of course, with Oliver Stone’s controversial movie JFK, along with myriad conspiracy theorists, sharing their skepticism.

Stephen King’s 11.22.63 deals with the events leading up to the most recent presidential assassination in U.S. history, from the perspective of people who knew Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet, it doesn’t cover the difficulties they had to endure after the event itself, and Oswald’s own murder in the immediate aftermath, which prevented the truth from being established beyond doubt.

Sources: History Matters; CNN; Spokesman