Kenneth Jess Porter was mostly known for being married to Marina Oswald Porter. There’s very little information about him online. So this article will focus more on his wife, Marina Oswald Porter.
His Wife, Marina Oswald Porter
Marina Nikolayevna Oswald Porter was born on July 27, 1941. She lived with her mother and stepfather in the Soviet Union where she was born until 1957, when she traveled to Minsk to live with her uncle Ilya Prusakov, a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, to pursue her studies in pharmacy.
On March 17, 1961, Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald (a former U.S. Marine who had fled to the Soviet Union) met at a dance. Six weeks after getting engaged, they got married, and the following year June Lee (their daughter) was born. The family immigrated to the United States in June 1962 and settled in Dallas, Texas. George de Mohrenschildt introduced the couple to Ruth Paine, a Quaker and Russian language student, at a gathering in February 1963.
Through the media, Marina got to learn of John F. Kennedy’s murder and, later, of her husband’s incarceration. When questioned if Lee owned a gun, Marina pointed to the garage, where Oswald kept his weapon wrapped in a blanket. Nevertheless, no gun was discovered when Dallas Police Department detectives arrived at the Paine residence that afternoon. She was then interrogated about her husband’s role in the President’s assassination and the shooting of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit at the Paine home and afterwards at the Dallas Police Department’s main office. Although her husband appeared to be in control, Marina claimed that she could tell that he was scared by the look in his eyes. “He gave me a visual farewell as he left. I understood that” she said.
After Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby as he was being taken from the City Prison to the County Jail two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, she became a widow at the age of 22.
At first, she stayed in Dallas, Texas. Over $70,000 in gifts were provided to her by unidentified sources. In addition to a photograph of Lee holding the gun used to kill JFK, she also sold Lee’s Russian diary for $20,000 and $5,000. She also tried to get the rifle in her custody so she could sell it, but she was unsuccessful.
She attended the University of Michigan in 1965, but she later came back to Dallas and bought a home. She married electronics worker Kenneth Jess Porter in 1965; they had a son together, and she later accused him of domestic abuse. She naturalized as an American citizen in 1989.
Marina has stated that she now believes Oswald was totally innocent of the deaths of Kennedy and Tippit and that Lee was the “prayer man” observed on the Book Depository steps at the time of the assassination, despite the fact that she has not formally renounced any of her Warren Commission testimony.