Today in History - December 11: Last-minute change of heart saves future president's life
A last moment change of heart was the only thing that saved John F. Kennedy from a likely assassination on December 11, 1960.
The president-elect was leaving his holiday home for mass that Sunday morning in Palm Beach, Florida.
Without any issue, Kennedy and his young family left for church and had no idea how close they came to death.
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John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie with his namesake son, taken days before the assassination attempt at the baby's baptism. Nine Archives
Because parked outside the home was a car packed with dynamite, set to be detonated by aggrieved postman Richard Paul Pavlick.
Pavlick had set up the crude but likely effective plan to kill Kennedy a month before he was to be sworn in as president.
But unwilling to harm Kennedy's young children, Pavlick decided to wait for another time for the assassination.
At the time Caroline Kennedy was three years old, and John F. Kennedy Jr had been born two weeks earlier.
Pavlick, then 73, was outraged when Kennedy won what he thought to be a crooked election the previous month.
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Caroline Kennedy interrupts a press conference from her father John F. Kennedy in the days after the aborted assassination attempt. Nine Archives
He resented the Kennedys and despised Catholics in general.
Deciding to kill Kennedy before he could be sworn in, he bought a substantial quantity of dynamite, gave away his property and disappeared in his 1950 Buick.
While he tried to hide his whereabouts, he couldn't resist sending postcards to the local postmaster in Belmont, New Hampshire.
He wrote that the town would soon hear from him in a "big way".
The savvy postmaster realised the postcards were coming from locations where Kennedy had travelled, and he alerted the Secret Service.
By December 11, the Secret Service were already looking for him and his car.
He was arrested four days later when a Palm Beach police officer spotted his car.
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Richard Paul Pavlick is led into a courtroom by James Couch, Chief Deputy US Marshall of Kansas City, right, in Springfield, Missouri on February 2, 1962. AP
Pavlick was ruled to be mentally ill and committed to an institution.
Criminal charges against him were dropped on December 2, 1963, ten days after Kennedy had been successfully assassinated.
Pavlick was released from hospital in 1966.
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